Unfortunate Life of a Fanfiction Authoress
by Jai Rose
Summary: It is not all puppy dogs and kittens when you find out the world you live in is a lie. Especially when that lie has been made to seem fake and safer than driving when no one else is on the road. Pffh, safe. Summary is me trying to stay sane.-
1. An Experiment Gone Horribly… Right?

Summary: The Decepticons are looking for a way to use human genetics to grow their army-but their research isn't looking too promising. At least, not until the proper DNA combination is found. That's where Jay Rose comes in... only to be carted off into a world of pain and confusion! What's in store for her now?

Disclaimer: I don't own? There really isn't any other way to say it...

Chapter One: An Experiment Gone Horribly… Right?

This is kind of awkward, writing to whoever you are that's reading this. This is kind of going against my… eh, superiors, I guess you could call them, and I'm putting myself in danger by doing it, but I just don't care anymore! What are they going to do? Beat me? Even if they do, I can't just sit here and wait for help anymore. I need to do something to get word out! I mean, I managed to get myself into this situation, right? Now I just need to get myself out.

Yeah, right, I should explain. You don't even know what this crazy person is rambling about! So I'll just write it out in ink: The Situation. I thought this was going to be easy to write, but it's actually pretty hard. Nothing is ever easy anymore, now that I think about it… Well, I can't think of any way to say this more gently, so here it is:

I'm a product of a Decepticon experiment gone terribly _right_. I'll explain later, if you wish. I'll be the first to say that I'm an abomination. I'll concur readily that I am. But that's not the best place to start my story.

Yeah, I know. "Decepticons aren't real, even us fans know that. This is lame." And then you reach for the Back button, right? Did you think anything along those lines? Sorry, newsflash: they are. The Autobots, though I haven't had the pleasure of meeting any of them, are also honest-to-god real. It would be 'dangerous' and 'unnecessary' if I met with them, according to the Decepticons around here, but that really just means that they don't want me to get any ideas about freedom.

I'm sorry to dish this out to you guys like this. The war is real, as well. People and Transformers die every day, whether it happens in secluded locations or in public places the government covers up. I know of quite a few humans on the Decepticons' side who used to talk to me that are now, for lack of a better word… gone. Now all that's left of them are the human replicas: twisted things like mindless, obedient humans.

Bet that got you thinking. "Why is she not a mindless drone?" Well, that's because I'm Experiment 1000HG and they need me to have a brain, and the ability to feel pain. There were one thousand of us to begin with, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. Look at my number and guess how many of us survived.

Just two: me and one other person, Chris. We were forced to watch the others die. The reason? I still don't know. Maybe just to screw with our heads, or desensitize us for what was to come.

I've been officially missing from my family for six months…. the other thousands of teens and young adults have been 'missing' for even longer. I'll be recapping that entire time for the sake of both my mental health and your understanding of my situation. I'll spare no details; it might start out as rainbows and sunshine, but you'll just have to read on to find out the truth. This will be bloody and not for the weak-stomached.

Please understand that this is not just some story, but my real life. If I die, this story dies. I guess you could say I'm writing this because I just want a little peace of mind, to make sure that at least someone out there can acknowledge that I'm alive. Maybe one of you is a family member. Well, for you, I just want to say I love you. Have a good life without me.

All I'm asking is for you to read; judge this how you would like. All I want… no, _need_, is for you to remember. I might already have lost my hope, but need my mind go with it?

Remember a Decepticon experiment gone terribly, terribly right… or wrong, depending on your point of view.

I hope you understand a little of my life.

I sure as hell don't.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"_Yes?" I questioned as I turned to him curiously. Blurr smiled as dazzling a shy smile as a Transformer could and mumbled "Sorry" and "Never mind."_

I stopped typing, fingers aching heartily. Staring my night's work into submission, I looked over it again and again. Every now and then, I edited something. I swear, I re-read those four thousand words four times before I was satisfied and allowed a smile to form. Say hello to the world, Wild Flowers Can Bloom chapter number twenty-six.

I was super-excited with myself over that one line, (even if I would hardly admit it) because it ended a flurry of work on my fanfiction that had started hours and hours and hours before. After weeks of not touching my computer screen, (because it was, of course, broken) I had finally managed to write paragraph after paragraph of pure gold! _The Fanfiction community will not be committing murder over this._I thought quite smugly as I saved my work in my Priority One folder. It had been practically forever since I had saved or even updated my Wild Flowers Can Bloom story with anything new. I knew that it needed to be updated, or else my reviewers would end up hating me. I had only gotten a half-glance at the clock, but I still knew that it was almost three in the morning… not that it really mattered. _I mean, who goes to sleep early anyway? Grandparents? Psht, not this Girl! _I talked to myself a lot, I remember, using both my mouth and mind.

I had been working for six hours. If my mom knew that, I'd probably have been in bed by six every night! I, of course didn't want that. With a yawn that could rival a wild animal, I leapt off of my fancy spinning chair and landed on the soft carpet of my room with a pit-pat. I was surprised by the sound. I actually thought it was quite harsh, and listened intently for movement downstairs for almost half a minute. No sound. I let out a puff of air that I wasn't aware I had been holding. The coast was clear. I knew my computer was only a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from my bed, but I didn't want Mom coming in because she heard 'the floorboards creak'. She could be scary about that kind of thing!

When I felt I could move, I did, but I walked so softly that I could have been counted as a ninja. I managed a smile and a snicker at that idea, remembering how my siblings and I could all scare Mom easily… if she wasn't asleep. Asleep, she was a ninja herself! I yawned again before scurrying to hop into my pretty green pajamas. I'm not exactly a girly-girl, so those PJs were a stretch even for me. I was pulling my hair back from my shoulders when I caught my reflection in the mirror.

"Ugh." I groaned, leaning in and critically looking my face over like every other teenage girl. I wish now that I hadn't been so critical of myself back then.

Now, bear in mind, I was happy with myself just the way I was, though I should have been ecstatic… but I just had to be sure, y'know? It was kinda like someone would tell me I looked good, but I didn't quite allow myself to believe it. I had pretty hazel eyes that changed color… not anything wacky like purple or orange, but just between hazel-blue and hazel-green. It was mostly determined by the clothes I wore. My hair was a dark squirrel-brown that had natural streaks of highlight through it and fell to just above my shoulder line. My face was a little scarred from my younger years when I had left my acne unattended, though it was smooth now. I was told I had a quirky smile which was slightly lopsided. All in all, I was just average. For some reason, however, average was never good enough. I wanted to be extraordinary! Then again, who didn't?

As I stared at my likeness, I could only remember what day it was. _Sunday. Ugh._ I was going to get about three hours of sleep before I had to get up to go to morning Math, and I wasn't looking forward to it. We had just taken a test which I had done well on, but now we were moving on to graphing parabolas or something equally insane.

When that was finally over, I would hang out with my friends for a whopping twenty minutes. I liked to call them the "Maxly Maffia", since the group mostly consisted of my friend Amanda Maxly and all her ex-boyfriends or wannabe-boyfriends-at-one-time-in-their-lives… most of them the latter.

I would then rush to my American Experience class, where we would be told repeatedly that "You're juniors, start acting like it!", or "You only have such-and-such a time to complete this! Get to work." We would then be given some pointless grammar/vocab page to do and told to use the class period. Stupidest thing ever, when I think about it now.

Then, joy of joys, I would be going to French or Chemistry. I wasn't struggling in either one, but they were both crazily-intense classes nonetheless. My French Teacher was great… amazing, actually. My Chem teacher was a little more eccentric, often telling us that if we spilled acid on ourselves, we would find ourselves wet, naked and shivering under the emergency shower. We would all laugh every time she said it, hoping against hope that the acid stayed in the bottle and not on our hands, arms, or clothes. Any body part, really.

It would then be time for one of my most beloved classes: Art. Painting and sculpting were always fun. It was nice to be able to forget the harder classes and do something I wanted to do.

What happened after would either be health (A.K.A Hell) or Yearbook, where I would make pictures pretty. Simple classes, really. Much easier than trying to split an atom or something like that...

I smiled wearily at my reflection before letting it fall and realizing just how tiring that sounded. '_Maybe I should take a mental health day._' I thought to myself, yawning as I set my alarms, plural, and fell into the embrace of my pillow and comforter. Sometimes being a straight-A student was the worst thing ever, considering I didn't even know what I wanted to do with my life… I mean, you'd think that at this age you'd know, right? I got good grades and I still had no clue what I wanted to be. When graduation's only a year away, the pressure seems to mount until you're ready to explode. I guess the 'A' stands for Agonizing.

Personal doubts aside, I was afraid of a lot of things, so I had also given blood for the first time on Friday, trying to get over my fear. And now they had my blood type on record: O-negative, which was apparently a very good blood type… for other people. I could give blood to anyone, but I could only receive O-negative. I was really proud that I hadn't fainted at the sign of the needle, and after that it had been a cake walk.

In my Bio class the other year I had even gotten to see what my DNA looked like. For some reason though, it just didn't obey the laws of DNA. When it was supposed to swirl and coil it lay flat and unmoving, no matter how much I shook it. The teacher even had the nerve to claim I didn't put any of myself in it. Weird-o. Why would I not do my assignment? My goal through High school was a 3.75 GPA, I couldn't get that if I didn't do well in the classes.

I felt myself drifting into a deep sleep, reminding myself to think of 'Zoids' to become unconscious. It was kind of a ritual. Some people had fans they had to turn on, others music they had to play, and I had to think of plot lines for different TV shows. What I didn't know, or could even hope to grasp, was that this would be the last few hours of normal sleep I would ever get again. Why I didn't treasure it at the time is beyond me… I guess I was just a stupid Junior.

I wouldn't get the chance to become a proper Senior.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

The next day, I followed my schedule to the T. Weaving through crowds of people and sitting through hours upon hours of lecturing and homework… it was a boring day, nothing exciting happened. No fights, no screaming teenagers, and really no change from the schedule I had described the night before.

I was sitting in Health waiting for the bell to ring at 3:15, signaling the end of the school day. A few of my friends were sitting around me, talking about one of the few subjects that interested them. What could possibly interest a class full of freshman? One word: Walnuts.

"I don't know about you, but I think it would hurt. Swallowing a whole walnut…" That was my friend Richy being his usual freshman self. I had to admit, though, he was one of the cooler freshys, and kinda cute. One of the jocks in the class replied with "I've done it before!" almost defensively.

They were about to say something more when a loud beeping resounded throughout the whole school. _Sweet, blessed relief!_ I thought to myself, grinning and swinging my bag over my shoulder. It was heavy, but I had become accustomed to the weight. As we all rushed toward the door, I yawned and waited behind just a bit so I wouldn't be squished. As the line for the door was established, I quickly stepped in.

It took me all of three minutes to get out to my car. My brother would be out of the school in about five minutes, so I had to cool it down for us both. I remember that detail vividly because after that… time seemed to slow. I looked to where my car was… or at least, where it was supposed to be. It didn't register till I looked down at my keys that this wasn't my car. My head shot up as I looked at the car that was now in its place.

It was a police cruiser with a cop sitting on its rear end, arms crossed and looking straight at me. Or, at least, I assumed he was looking at me, though I couldn't tell because he had large sunglasses on. My heart beat faster as I tried to think what could have possibly happened. _Did I hit someone? Or did someone hit my car and they towed it? Was it impounded for some reason? Why is the police officer here?_ My thoughts were frantic as I walked closer, trying in vain to figure it out. Worry was always evident if I wasn't sure what was going on. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought this was kinda cool. Something to spice up my day.

I had probably just parked it somewhere else. _Yeah, that was it_. I started to look over the rows of cars in a futile attempt to see it. I was short (5'1), so seeing over the cars in the parking lot was an impossibility anyway. With a deep breath, I walked closer to the car.

"Um, Officer, is there a problem?" I asked, feeling my heart beat a billion times a second. I tried futilely to make contact with his covered eyes. He smirked as I talked, and a shiver ran a relay race down my spine. He got off the back of the car and stepped closer to me. For some reason that I couldn't fathom, my brain screamed _'danger'_. I ignored it. This _was_ a police officer.

"No, Ma'am. We just need you to come down to the station, something has happened to a family member. A Victor?" He was talking while looking at a small pad in his hand. My heart beat exploded faster, if that was possible by this point. That was my brother, the oldest out of all nine of us. I was so panicked that I didn't detect the strangeness in his voice, how it cracked every so often like he was reading scripted lines or something. It also didn't explain why my car was missing, but I didn't care when it was about family. First came God, then came Family, it was how my world worked.

"Is he alright?" Eyes wide, fear evident to the cop, I stepped closer. My mind was making up scenarios on its own. Horrible, horrible scenarios. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have been calmly wondering why I was so trusting. Like usual.

"I'm afraid I can't say, I was just told to bring you down to the station." His voice was weird now, sounding like he had a bad flu. My mind didn't pick that up though, it was stilling running circles, back flipping, and winning the Olympics.

"Alright." I said, almost too fast, as he held a door open to the back. I should have thought that was weird, but it didn't register. Gentlemen, they were hard to come by these days. Panic was the only thing I was feeling. I really should have been more perceptive, the warning signs were glaring at me.

If I would have looked just a little closer, I would have seen the blank and unchanging eyes of the cop, how his muscles were slightly perfect, the way his movements were jerky and unstable. Most important (and obvious) of all, there was the decal on his car that read "To Enslave and Destroy." It was all lost on my frantic mind.

I quickly grabbed my phone from my pocket and tried to call my Mom, ask her if it was true. But then I saw that I had no signal strength, and my heart plummeted. I didn't understand why at the time. Outside and in cars, I usually had the best signal.

I hadn't noticed the cop get into the car, but I heard it start and pull out. That was strange, it finally hit me. I would have jumped if he had shut the door, my nerves were on fire.

"Uh, Officer. Can I use your phone to call my mom?" I asked as politely as I could, trying not to be a bother. He didn't answer. Suddenly, polite demeanor was replaced by an unresponsive exterior. My heart had calmed down considerably, but leapt back into action when there was no response.

"Sorry, but please. It will only be a minute. And-" There was no reply and I started to panic. I played through scenario after scenario in my mind, and all of them were bad. _Is he a rapist? Oh my gosh, why did I get in the car?!_ I continued to berate myself as I looked back and forth from his head to the door. I tried the handle, only to find it was locked.

"Where are we going?" I asked in a smaller voice, staring in disbelief as the city started disappearing behind us as we entered the countryside. _How_ _is he going so fast, I haven't been in the car any more than five minutes… right?_

That's when I heard a sound crackle through the radio, sounding almost like the radio was eating half the car. I covered my ears to save them from the screeching noise, only to watch in fascinated horror as metal plates slid over the windows and in-between the front and back seats. It was unreal.

Then it was quiet. Nothing reached me from the outside world, I remember that as clear as day because then I started sobbing and shouting. I even pounded a few times on the metal-covered windows, and I even managed a few scratches on one, but had to stop because my hands were becoming sore.

Then, time stopped meaning anything as I heard a voice over some kind of intercom in the car.

"Hello, Jessica Cooper." It said in the most non-human voice I had ever heard, though it had an obviously snide and cocky sound to it. The speaker seemed to loath me, as if we had been enemies for years. "So nice of you to come quietly. I must congratulate you on your stupidity and confidence in the humans dressed as 'enforcers'. You were by far the easiest to capture. You may as well get some sleep, for the trip will be long and tiresome for your weak human body. We can't have you unwell when you arrive." He spat 'human' every time he could.

I was stunned into silence, grabbing the leather of the seats so hard that the seams might have come undone. My breathing was erratic as I completely freaked out. I wasn't one to have nervous breakdowns, but I felt one creeping up.

"What's going on?" I asked, my voice shaking the slightest bit as I shivered in what I only could think was pure fear. An equally foreign-sounding and haughty laugh was the reply. It sounded suspiciously like purring.

"You're going to help us defeat our long-sworn enemy. Unfortunately, the means by which you will do so will most likely be very painful on your part. As you humans say, 'no pain, no gain', if I am not mistaken. There will be much to gain, but also quite a lot of pain." The voice was so grammatically correct and cold… I just sat in silence. And it kept saying humans, which left a bad taste in my mouth… this could not be happening.

Everything I had ever written about Transformers was coming true. My characters who had been kidnapped by Decepticons and turned into horrible things that they had to live with forever. The ones who were still fighting in my stories to stop evil… This wasn't real. I tried to convince myself firmly, but my mind no longer held any say over what happened to me.

"Now. Hibernate." it commanded. I was about to do something really brave and stupid when I heard a whirling sound and then a steady _pssssshhh._ I couldn't see what was happening, but I could smell it.

It was half a minute later that I fell over in an induced sleep thanks to that inhuman voice's knockout gas. At least, that's what I remember.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

That's how this whole mess started. And, just to clear this up, none of the names in here are real. They are made-up names to protect both those involved and you. I am thankful, though, that you stayed around and read it. It's nice to know someone cares. :] fake smile or not.

This is kinda off subject, but I will **try **and update my other stories… I'm just not sure when I will have the time. I'm not even sure how I found the time to write this story. **But** I am a Fan Fiction Authoress first and foremost, even though I might be leading a more abnormal life now.


	2. Experiment 1000HG

I apologize for my lack of speed, many things have been preventing me from posting. I've been a little under the weather. It's no excuse really, but it's the best I've got to explain myself. Things are messed up now, but I shall try my very hardest to update more regularly. No promises, but I will try. The next chapter should be up soon also, but for now this is all I have done. I even asked Chris to proof it. We had to do it in secret, but he'll be glad to help next time also. It's a high, if anything.

I'm sorry for holding you up, but here it is. Not much, really.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, except myself. Nobody can take that away from me.

* * *

- Experiment 1000HG

I woke up confused and cold. The worst part was that I was dead tired, even after sleeping for however long I had slept. It was as if all the strength had been sapped from my body. It was close to agonizing. I had yet to open my eyes, but I could hear some sort of shuffling around me.

As soon as I even tried to open my eyes, the light was too much. It took multiple tries before I was successful. When I could finally see what surrounded me, I was so shocked that I stared open-mouthed. It was a swarm. Not just any ordinary swarm, though.

It was what looked like thousands of girls and boys, all around my age and everyone just as scared as me. I sat up from my position on the floor. My hands moved up to my mouth in horror, covering it as I tossed my head from side to side. Disbelief: That was my first thought. Some of the other teenagers looked at me and smiled sadly. They'd all been through it before. How many times I never found out. Who would honestly ask about that?

"Where am I?" I asked to no one in particular. My wide eyes watched in growing horror as a giant _thing_ picked up two people at a time and put them in cages as wide as two cars side by side and just as tall. No one ran. It was almost as if the consequences outweighed the freedom of it. The screams from the people were eerily distant. The thing was taller than any house I had ever seen, and proportioned like a human. But not.

It was made entirely out of metal; that I could tell, anyways. And, cut me some slack, I had just woken up to this. It had a small head that sat upon massive shoulders, with large burly arms and composed-looking fingers. Walking with two legs that looked altogether human, but at the same time inhuman, it continued on its mission of depositing people where they had to go. Systematic and calm it didn't even blink when its task involved the screaming of people. On one side of the group of people, there were cars driving around. I gasped silently in horror. One _**transformed**__._ My mouth went dry as I realized a few things about my situation.

One: those ugly yet beautiful monsters were in fact Transformers. My mind jumbled for words to describe what I felt. Fear, awe, incredulity, and deep, deep, way far back in my mind- Curiosity. I immediately chewed on my fingernail down to the little stub, a habit I had yet to break, stopping only when someone came and sat next to me.

And Two: I had absolutely no clue what was going on.

"We don't know." The person sitting next to me answered my earlier question dejectedly, as though all the fight had been sucked out of him. I looked over to see a guy around my age, looking at the Transformer in both fear and awe, too. He would have been cute at any other time, but right now his blonde hair and blue eyes were just another comforting _human_ thing to look at. I could feel tears threatening to pour themselves out in rivulets. I tried to breathe evenly through the lump forming in my throat, but failed miserably.

"_Why_ are they doing this?" I couldn't help but ask out loud. My eyes blurred for a second before I wiped the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. No one wanted to show weakness in a situation like this. Cleared of tears, I saw his look of concern, and then he replied.

"Because **they can**… Besides it's not like we can get away." He replied, folding his legs against his chest and resting both head and arms on them: the fetal position, most people would call it. I caught a glance of some kind of metal glittering off his skin and took a sharp breath when I realized it was a bracelet. I checked myself and realized that I had one on, too. Great.

"What are these?" I asked both him and myself inquiringly as I looked it over. There seemed to be something etched into it in perfectly clean straight lines. There were no jagged edges on it, just perfectly symmetrical letters that said '_1000HG'. _ I looked at him and he showed me his bracelet: 0453HM.

I looked at the boy again. He was staring out into space. It seemed like we were both shell-shocked, now that I think about it. Nothing like this had ever happened before to either of us; we lived well-sheltered lives. There was never a need to worry about things that would never happen, like **getting kidnapped** by giant _robots_! _So much for that idea… _I shivered. I looked down and realized that I only had on a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and that it was getting colder.

"Here." the boy said, and he gave me his coat. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so he didn't need it, and I happily accepted it. I wasn't my usual ignorant self; I knew that I needed warmth in a place that had none. Pulling it on, I remember feeling the satisfying feeling of being safe and warm. My eyes watered, but I didn't cry. The Transformer was steadily making his way through the crowd of people, putting teens in cages by fours. I was good at math, so I did a few quick calculations to try to figure out how he was grabbing them.

I remember distinctly cursing myself for not taking physics. Apparently, you learn something about trajectory in that class, not in Chem…

It was impossible, his choices seemingly random, so I just stayed as close as possible to my new friend. It gave me a sense of protection. And that was when I realized I hadn't given him my name.

"My name's Jessica." I said, looking away shyly. I wasn't the sort of person to not introduce myself, even in life-or-death situations. I stuck my hand out, much to both our surprises. He took it firmly, yet hesitantly.

"Chris." he said, and I looked at him. He managed a small smile which I gladly returned, if only a little one. I was about to say something else, but we were interrupted by a creaking of metal, and the Transformer grabbed two people right next to us. There was a second of panicked screams above, and then he turned to us. Without a word, he snatched both of us and hoisted us high up in the air.

It was one of the scariest experiences I had ever had. The feeling of being lifted up so fast was like being hooked to a bungee cord and instantly yanked twenty feet into the air: painful and nauseating. I was queasy by the time I reached the peak. I couldn't even move a hand over my mouth because it was being crushed to my side. The feeling that I was going to throw up came on strong. I didn't usually throw up over anything. So the bot's hand was safe for now. Thinking on it now, I really wish I had puked.

We only stayed in the air a maximum of thirty seconds before we were put down, still none-too-gently, in a cage. There were already two other people in it, a boy and a girl around the age of seventeen. They looked quite a lot alike, and I realized they were twins. Blonde with hazel eyes that were puffy from crying, and facial features that were so similar it was incredible. They were both frightened, curled up in a corner holding each other as if that would make it all better. As if they were both puzzles with pieces that were falling. Even from several yards away, I could see them shivering.

I had landed awkwardly next to Chris with a 'hmpft', but was able to direct a short question at all who would reply. How I bounced back so quickly was beyond me.

"You alright?" Chris just smiled, nodded, and then we both looked toward the siblings. I remember feeling both envy and pity for them, seeing as they had each other. Then again, the fact that they had each other would just make it worse when whatever was going to happen to them… happened.

I wasn't one to resign to my fate; especially when it came to me possibly dying. But I didn't want to be the one to deny it until the very last second. I watched movies, and I knew that ignorance was 'bliss', but I didn't want to be clueless.

Chris and I both sat on the cage's wall with the twins, and we didn't talk again for another few minutes. We were all just trying to figure out the situation by ourselves. Who knew what was going to happen? We could have only minutes to live. _This could be a hostage situation, the Decepticons trying to trade us for something from the Autobots. At least, it could be… As I always say "I can hope, can't I?"_

"What could they possibly want us for?" I was thinking out loud, but I didn't necessarily think it was a horrible thing. Everyone looked up, the same thought clearly running across their faces. It was a look of pure dread. We all sat in silence until; finally, the younger boy spoke up.

"I thought this was a bad dream. I've tried to wake up, but it's like we're in limbo." he said in a whisper, and I watched in horror as tears started to rush down his face. It was a very un-manly thing, to cry. I felt bad for him; even though we were close in age, he looked more like a child that needed comfort. I did something I would later regret. Still do to this day.

With only a moment of thought, I did it.

I scooted over and hugged both of the siblings, tightly. For some reason, they leaned in on me and started crying, loudly. I patted both of them on the back, saying soothing words, but never saying words of encouragement. I didn't want to lie to them. _Always the cynical one_, I thought to myself. _We will probably all die here_. So much for being optimistic as I usually was. Then again, usually I don't get kidnapped and thrown into a cage.

Chris came closer, but was smart enough to keep out of it. We were all in this mess together, but in the end, we'd be alone. I remember I hugged them tighter then, pretending they were my younger siblings for just a moment, so that I could experience a little bit of relief from the overwhelming pressure too. I pictured both my younger brothers. Joe was smiling and laughing. His goofy smile and strange laugh set my heart ablaze in fire, and I wished quite selfishly for him to be here. He was taller than me, so I would be hugging him around the middle and he would pat my head, telling me I was 'a gnome.' I could feel the prickle of tears but held them in by burying my head into the girls hair. Mitch would just punch my arm, **too** manly to give a hug. But I would still hug him none-the-less.

"We'll get through it together." I heard myself murmuring encouragingly. I didn't believe my words, but it helped**. **Hope was a fragile thing. I hardly knew these people, but it was enough to know we were all in the same situation. It was like a family thrown together by the funny little word called fate or destiny. Right now, I would even call it role-playing. For you people that don't know, it's where you have a character and choose the actions they take with other people. Then again, you probably know and are looking at the computer screen like I'm an idiot.

"We were named after Romeo and Juliet." They both joked, good naturedly. It turned out that the girl was Juliet and the boy was Ryan. It had been a few minutes after they had stopped crying. We all took turns talking about anything and everything. Juliet and Ryan had an inside joke that was apparently a riot. I **had** to smile at that as they both laughed, lost in their own little world. A world where Transformers couldn't keep them in a cage.

"_It must be nice_." I thought to myself offhandedly. I learned that they had been here for no more than a day, if not was smiling too, but had an almost far-off look in his eye. It was quiet as we sobered from our laughter, Chuckles dying in an attempt to look indifferent. When you were caged it seemed like the only thing you could do was laugh hard or cry. Falling deeper into despair.

"How about you Chris, anything interesting about you?" I changed the subject as tactfully as I could. Chris's head jolted up slightly surprised. HIs eyes opened a little wider as he realizing that he was supposed to answer. He fumbled over the first few words before actually getting them out.

"Uh, well. I'm not really special. You know. Um, I'm in high School. Go to a little school with about six hundred people. Love writing enough that I joined the Yearbook. I have a cat named Speckles who, I swear, waits for us to even think about opening a book and reading before plopping herself on our laps. I also…" Chris seemed to loosen up almost instantly as he talked about everything but the kitchen sink. His minute smile was a refreshing sight, enough that I almost forgot where I was. That was until the lights went out directly after a long foghorn bellow.

As if the cages weren't bad enough. Now we had a bedtime. Something I hadn't known for all my time of being a Fanfiction author.

Since it was chilly, we all slept close together, though we touched only in small spots and never openly hugged another person… except for the twins, they were the exception. It seemed like all the hugging and crying before was a past thing, something taboo. The others' steady breathing surrounded me, but I couldn't sleep. I wasn't sure how they did. I can't say I had ever had insomnia, until this night. _It felt wrong to be comfortable!_ My thoughts raced every which way. A few lapped some of my slower thoughts and ultimately returned to worry about my predicament and if my family would ever find me.

The car, whatever its name was, had told me that I would help them defeat their enemy. How was I to do that? I wasn't anything more than a human. Which they hated and were all but indifferent to. All through the Transformer shows Decepticons showed little to no care about what happened to the human companions. _Then again, how much of that was real? Was all of it made up? Were there really factions called Decepticons and Autobots or are they made up and this species was just plain evil?_ I don't think my mind could take much more negativity. My hand made its way to my forehead, and shielded my eyes from the imaginary light. I felt a light patch of liquid on my cheek.

I was crying silently. I hadn't even noticed it…

And, what about my mom and siblings? What were they told? Had I even been gone an entire day yet?- My mind couldn't stop asking questions that had no answer. I could only clench my eyes to stop the tears from coming. It seemed so unfair! My life was good. I** wasn't** supposed to be one of the casualties to the horribleness of life. I was going to be the one on top of life, reaching my goal and keeping it within arm's reach. Vet or Artist seemed so far away now. But I refused, quite stubbornly to give them up.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Now, it was as if someone thought it funny to hold another dream of mine over my head in perfect Irony: I had always wanted to meet a real Transformer. Maybe Ironhide or Jazz, definitely Optimus… But the Decepticons had never really crossed my mind as a danger, seeing as Starscream was one of my favorites. Now it seemed like favorites were turning into real life killing machines.

As I sniffled, I felt someone's hand clasp mine softly, almost hesitantly. I instantly held on back to the warmth. I wasn't sure who it was, but the gesture spoke so many words I couldn't even describe it. Talking would ruin the comfort I felt, so I stayed quiet: Thinking, hoping, and dreaming, even.

Then, as if the Transformers _knew_ that I didn't want to sleep, I heard another sickly _pssssshhh, _as though something was hissing and laughing at me_. _This time, I knew what was coming. _Damn it! _I thought, wanting to snarl at the stupid bots. My limbs became heavy once more and I slept against my will.

It was an interesting feeling, being forced to sleep. It feels like, all of a sudden, breathing becomes _so much_ easier and you just feel _so_ heavy, as if you could fall through the floor. It's like you can't even stop the sleep when it comes. Like your own body is against you.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

When we all awoke the next morning, it was due to the excruciatingly bright lights glaring directly in our faces. What we heard after that startled us into full awareness: the grinding of gears and the screeching of metal cages being dragged. The occasional scream of protest wasn't exactly welcome either. That was enough to get us all up, only to stare in horrified distress as cage after cage was pulled away, then picked up and carried off by another of the monstrous machines. There were a few screams from those in the cages… until they were carried or pushed out of the room through a huge door. After that point, the screams were silenced.

No one in my cage spoke, but we all huddled together in a corner. I can honestly admit that I was scared out of my mind. It all seemed so surreal; the giant Transformers lumbering over us, pulling cages left and right, stacking other cages of humans who were coming back out from the door. Though I noticed that that number was considerably less than the ones leaving. Only five had returned of the tons that were exiting.

After a while of wondering what was beyond it, that name just stuck: The Door. In time, it would become the most feared word in our vocabulary. More feared than even Megatron should have been.

That whole thing went on for a long time, until finally our cage was the one being roughly picked up. The bot who did it looked so foreign to me; I wouldn't even know where to start describing him. He was frightening, though, and completely void of any human emotion except for, just maybe, anger. It wasn't an anger I was aware of, or used to. It was polite and kept in check, as if he was only angry for the sake of it.

When we went through The Door, everything dimmed considerably. At least, the lighting wasn't _so_ harsh. Everything else, however, was still the same dark level of 'cruel'. We all looked around frantically, trying desperately just to keep our feet because of the constant tipping and swaying of the cage. Juliet only slipped once, but I was amazed that she never once called out for help. She 'took it like a man', as the saying goes, because she had to, and that was it. Most of the times teenagers complained over the smallest things, I was proud to have been put into her cage.

The swaying made my head light as we were brought to another door, the same size and general shape as The Door. When it opened, the painfully bright lights from our holding room were once again glaring at us from the ceiling high above. I could see out of the cage, and was surprised to see a laboratory of sorts, complete with electronic equipment that could easily rival NASA's finest. We all couldn't help but stare in wonder, even if we were still shivering in fear of some of the more… sinister devices.

"Just put it on the table." a voice said from an adjacent room, as though this was only the most natural response when a cage of humans was brought in. I was still wearing Chris's jacket, but it was much colder in this room then the other one. I felt the air's chill regardless. The Transformer followed the voice's instructions and placed us kinda carefully on the counter before turning around and leaving.

Whoever it was that had spoken made us wait a lot longer than necessary, probably messing with our heads. But when he came out, another Transformer, I wished he had given us more time to mentally prepare ourselves. I remembered at that moment that most Transformers have an alternate mode, a method of transportation or disguise in the world at large. This one was no different, appearing to be made up of parts of some kind of plane. The reason I thought that was mostly because he had a cockpit.

It was at this time that I started wishing this was all just a dream. Reverently.

I was stuck with the fact that he looked a lot like one of my favorite Decepticons: Starscream. He even had the same color scheme. Maybe some of the TV show had been factual. I thought about that a bit more…Starscream was a scientist. A good one, too. But it couldn't be. He was just make believe, but these guys were real. I refused to believe that he was Starscream, my favorite bot from both the show and movie.

"Hm. Ugly and despicable creatures, you humans are." he said, talking both to himself and us. If I hadn't been so scared and if he had been human I would have given him a piece of my mind. But then again, those are just 'what if's. They have no hold on reality. I realize that I have been writing 'He' instead of 'It', but that was mostly because 'He' just fit 'it' so well.

He went around the lab gathering different equipment, some of it appearing totally harmless and others looked horrible dangerous as well as sharp. I would be the first to admit openly that needles scare the living sh…a…poopy out of me. He mumbled something under his breath and then we all heard that horribly alien laugh. I only cringed this time; I can't say the same for my co-captives.

"What is he doing?" Ryan asked me barely talking above a whisper. I had no response because of course; I was just a teenager as well. I wanted to freak out, but now that I had people relying on me… that didn't really work. Instead, I silently screamed in terror in my head. Teenagers rarely deal with stress well, with me as an exception. When one person would scream at their parents I simply turned the other cheek. This had to be the first time in the history of forever that I had felt so much negative emotion.

The Transformer continued on his merry way, collecting and rearranging things. Nonetheless, as soon as he finished he was headed our way with plenty of tools that could be put in a pile and burned for being 'torturous to look at'. We all cringed into the back of the cage. Somehow, I was pushed in front of them all. "_So much for 'family' when your life is on the line." I thought bitterly. _I caught a glance of them all staring fearfully at the towering giant. Maybe they weren't as big of transformer fans as I was, but I knew that if this had been a reversed situation, getting trapped with the Autobots I would have been screaming my head off with pure joy.

I would trade this fear for any other emotion if it would help.

He grumbled before leaning over the cage. "So scared. " Was his muttered small–talk. "Honestly, this project had better not be wasting my time." He talked to himself, almost as if we didn't exist or have the intelligence to answer. No one directly called me stupid. For some strange reason that I cannot fathom, I was angry. Not terrified or even scared anymore, but just suddenly mad. I never liked to be looked down on. That's why I did so well in school; to be different from the drop-outs.

"Wasting _your _time? What about our time!" I shouted to be heard, but even I could hear my voice shake. I don't know where I got the nerve to yell at a Transformer. I didn't care either, at the time. He looked down, almost surprised. I continued shaking with the fear that had been hiding itself. I couldn't stop, though. "We don't even know why we were kidnapped in the first place. And… and… an-and I want some answers, damn it!" I yelled at him, blinking back tears of frustration. Somehow I had managed to find myself standing a step closer to him than I had been prior to my shouting, glaring at him with all my might.

"Jessica-" Ryan started, only to be cut off by the massive hand suddenly descending toward me. I didn't even have a chance to yelp in surprise before the bot grabbed me around the middle, arms pinned to my sides. I panicked slightly as I was lifted. His hands were as large as a car, and I fit like a pea into the top part of his fist. Then started the nauseating flip from comfortable to bungee cord launch. I shivered and hoped wildly that he didn't feel it.

Soon enough I was right in front of his face as he scrutinized my upper half that was visible. His face up close was like something off a video game magazine. It was all harsh angles of metal, shaping human features, like something you'd find in a Transformer video game. His lips didn't move when he talked, but they were there. Just unsympathetic accents to his, for lack of a better word, amazing face. If you ever see him you'll understand. Even in this situation, I couldn't help but think of how cool Transformers were. Evil or not.

Hm, you've got a little-" He paused momentarily, an evil glitter in his eye. "What is it that you humans call it? When you behave fearless and stupid in front of your betters… I believe it is 'spunk'." He insulted me, making his features shape into a smile. I couldn't believe it. Even though my heart was beating a thousand times a minute I still could feel a little pit of anger rising. What I said next was rash, but spoke my feelings quite loudly and lucidly; even if they were crazy and stupid.

"Spunky or not, that's how we 'humans' are. You Transformers are just weird robotic androids without any skills except for beating each other!" Now after I said that, I realized I probably shouldn't have insulted a scientist's 'skills'. But he got the message and glowered down at me, even the mocking smile a past frequency as he burned with rage.

At first he looked so furious that I thought for sure he was going to crush me from pure fury, but slowly it died down and whatever pressure that had been on my chest and arms was lifted as he held me loosely. I hoped silently that he would just kill me, because the new smile he now adopted was scarier than all get out. He had on the most demonic smirk I had ever seen. Every sound or movement not important to my immediate situation was suddenly ignored as I was momentarily occupied with keeping myself from falling as he opened his palm slowly and deliberately, smiling all the way. I clutched at his fingers in panic.

I couldn't help but stare, horrified, at his smiling face as he allowed me small footholds that weren't that great. I was slipping and feeling just plain scared. All that bravado that I'd felt when I was 'safe' in his hand was gone. I think this was the point where I realized that it was all real. I wouldn't be getting out by just batting my eyes and running when they looked away. The Transformers held all the cards, and they knew it. Maybe we _were _the inferior life forms in this scenario.

I held on with all my might as Starscream started to tilt his hand so my back was facing open space. I was all but dangling over thin air, caught in a game of life-or-death that he treated like ping pong. I felt like a cockroach as I scrambled to find a hold. My palms were sweating as I gripped as hard as I could.

Athleticism was not my strong point; I was a freakin' Fanfiction authoress for Pete's sake!

"Now. Let us try something-"He glanced at my bracelet."- 1000HG." I almost protested but as soon as I shifted my breath to speak; he shifted his hand likewise. "It would do you well to listen, Human. And your companions in their cage, too." He waited a half second as if he was getting their attention. I had all but forgotten about them. When you were about to be dropped from who-knows-how-high, you forget important things like that. I wanted to look, though I dared not lose my focus I didn't feel like dying. My arms shook as I hung on for dear life. Again; strength is not my best point, or even a medium point. It's more of a 'wow, is your arm really that limp?' Point.

"Things in the Decepticon base are simple. You obey me. I am your Master, and I will not tolerate your unreasonable behavior." He turned from me to glare at the cage, so we all felt his stare." This is your only warning. It happens again and I will not hesitate to kill you." I believed it." I have no need for an Experiment to be difficult. There are billions of Humans that I can pick from, one death is of no concern to me. To you though, it might matter." All was dangerously quiet as he spoke. My heart was hammering steadily." Is that understood?" His voice, I noticed, as cold and emotionless. He had just told us that we were to obey him like he was a god. Or else. I heard a few faint affirmatives from behind me.

I hesitated in my answer, trying to get my grip back because I was starting to slip. His palm tipped again and my thoughts turned almost animalistic. Panic at the forefront.

"Is that understood 1000HG?" He all but growled tilting his hand at an alarming rate. I scrambled and couldn't avoid it any longer. He had me exactly where I didn't want to be.

"Yes." I said as meekly as I could, which wasn't hard seeing as I was dead tired and out of breath from my man-handling. His palm halted, and still at the vicious angle, stalled. It didn't go back to the safe position and I was still hanging dangerously on a whim. His whim to be precise.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I heard him mock me, trying to elicit something else. I was quaking, trying to live and wracking my brain for a solution. I'll be the first to admit groveling came to mind, but I had too much pride for that. Then my stories came to save the day. Playing dumb.

"I d-don't know how else t-t-to address you… but, yes I do. I understand." I stuttered to myself, hoping it was enough that he heard it. His hand started shaking as he righted it, and I looked up to see him laughing. As though it was the most natural thing in the world. Two minutes ago I would have given him a piece of my mind, but now that he had almost succeeded in killing me... I decided it would be better to keep my mouth shut.

"Ha, a human who knows of our Glorious Race but not my name. You are not a very good 'fan' are you, Girl?" Then His eyes flashed and he stared down at me above his nose- condescending and all, "I've got a proposition for you-" It was smooth and slick as a snake, but I was forced to listen- "if you can guess my name, I will allow you to go back to your cage for the day, is that agreeable? Or is your 'survival instinct' broken?" His smile had turned into some kind of twisted smirk a while ago, but it was his change in tone that scared me the most. You ever heard a kitten purr, than hiss the next second? The change was as instantaneous and brutal.

Transformer names popped into head. Starscream most of all. But I pushed it away, knowing it was too obvious. And for some reason, I was battling with myself. I didn't want to become one of my own characters unknowingly. Anybody but him would do. Fighting fate was another common dictation between my characters.

"But, if you can't guess… well, that just means your cell mates can go back but you're here with me for the rest of the day. No, wait! I have a better idea. You'll stay with me the rest of the week! What do you say to that, Human?" It seemed like this was all just a game to him. Fun and games, probably even when someone lost an eye. Then again, he didn't need these games to keep me here a week. He controlled my very life in the palm of his hand. Literally. The symbolism wasn't lost on me, either.

Oh, and did I mention every time he called me human, I wanted to shout "My name is Jessica!"

What was I supposed to guess? There were tons of transformers and he was probably one who was talked about for less than a minute. Skywarp? Thundershock? He could be Megatron in disguise… Oh my gosh, he could be Primus for all I knew! He waited quiet patiently as my brain mulled over the decision. The cage was deathly silent as I looked at Chris, Juliet, and Ryan. Their faces were pressed against the cage, showing expressions of concern. It darn near broke my heart.

I finally decided on one after a minute of consideration, not sure if it was right or not. Leaning toward the latter. I could practically have guessed what happened next. Heck, I could have written it. He, I just did- didn't I?

"I, uh… Skywarp?" I asked, looking at him for his reaction, and instantly knowing it to be wrong. At first glance he looked taken aback, as if I had guessed correctly. But then, all of a sudden he burst out laughing. Palming shaking hard as he had a fit of laughter, I almost fell off. My spirits plummeted as I realized I had gotten it wrong. He looked almost human as he laughed at me. In the cruelest meaning of the word.

"Me? That blundering idiot? Ha, now that is a laugh!" He didn't stop laughing for a good ten seconds, maybe more. With every second that passed my body betrayed me a little more. I became fearful first, then shook, fell on my butt, and finally I had to stop myself from flat out crying. My mind scrambled as it failed me. My heart was gripped by icicles of cold fingers, all worming doubt and despair into my very life. It wasn't long until his face was right next to me that he told me his real name. I mentally face-palmed, calling myself every stupid name I could think of. _Of course my life would follow my own fictional characters. _I thought, quite angry at myself. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by just giving into life, but no- I had to go and defy it to the last drop of blood left in me.

"My name is and will always be Starscream. You, my dear," A smirk," get to stay with me a little longer than you were originally supposed to. This experiment might just be… what is that word you humans use? 'Fun' I believe." I shivered as he stared at me with the hungry eyes of a scientist. If you've ever seen a dog look at a piece of raw meat, you understand the look. It could have been any of us, but it was me. Stupid me, always sticking my nose where it didn't belong or where it shouldn't be.

With that smile still plastered on his face, his gaze turned far off, like he was looking at something we couldn't see. That look lasted only a second, though, before he snapped back into reality by walking over to another table and clumsily dropping me. Right smack dab in the middle. It would have hurt, had it been from a higher place. I shivered as I felt the cold metal, which was totally different from the living warmth of Starscream's hand. I watched in horror as he turned around without another word, looking at another Transformer coming in who grabbed the cage with Chris, Juliet and Ryan in it. My brain finally pieced it together. I really was going to be alone with a crazy scientist who wanted nothing more than to dissect me… I was screwed all over again.

My throat tightened as I saw a figure stand up to look out at me. Even from a distance I could tell it was Chris. His expression was lost on me though. I wanted to wave and give a smile, but I knew they wouldn't see it. So, standing up and twisting my hands together nervously in front of me, I watched, unable to do anything. Clammy hands told me that I was indeed scared out of my mind at the prospect of being left alone with a Transformer. _He probably jus__t wants __to tear me apart... limb by bloody limb _… I thought in horror, again. I didn't know at the time that he was in one of his better moods. And he is very moody.

As soon as the transformer had been given orders by Starscream in the weird language I could only guess was Cybertronian he turned around and left, dutifully. I was screwed: Utterly and royally screwed. My mind kept telling me over and over, almost chanting. Starscream took his sweet time turning around and stalking toward my table. I was literally shaking where I stood.

You ever heard of a term called pack mentality? The chain of command and all. Well, at the moment Starscream was the Alpha male. I can only guess the reason I was so…. Unreasonable at the beginning of our meeting was probably because I was kinda used to being in charge. We in a sense butted heads, and he won. And that was why I was cowering into the table, ready to accept my death. Or it could be simple human self-preservation of looking pitiful.

I didn't dare move, even though my body was on fire. Another fun fact about animal emotions in humans. Or whatever. I remember watching something like this on Animal Planet. Where a young fawn was hiding in the brush and a wolf snuck up on it, making a snack out of it in minutes. Thing was, the fawn thought it was safe. I know I'm not. I'm not sure if you understood the analogy. But let me explain. Baby deer, Fawns, have a unique way of protecting themselves: They have virtually no smell. And almost all of their predators use smell to hunt them, thus the fawn believed it was safe. I'm not that lucky or delusional.

As soon as he made it to the table, he set his hand down palm up and flat. He kept it there as I gazed on it. I stared at it for a moment, trying to figure out what he could possibly want from me. If I was a transformer I probably would have short circuited from confusion. He looked oddly amused as he moved it closer, hinting. _Is this a test?_ I thought to myself._ Is this to see how I react to things?_ Looking up at those optics that obviously had some ulterior motive, I realized it probably was. _An Obedience test? Maybe. Probability? High. And talking to myself about statistics? Happening this very moment._

I understood. I thought so anyway. He wanted me to get on his hand, without the fuss of him picking me up… But why was he silent all of the sudden? He could have ordered me. He seemed to like doing that. Shaking slightly from before, I walked over. My eyes never looked away from him. And I knew instinctively that if he moved any faster than necessary I would curl up into a ball and stay that way until he ordered me to do something. He didn't though, and I managed to crawl into his hand without too much hassle. Though, getting into his hand was very hard. I mean it's not like I climb into giant robot hands on a daily basis. If anything, it took more balance than I could summon at the time.

When he lifted his hand, it was much more natural than the first time, but still fast. No jerky movements, no weird air patterns to flip me off. This was not the first time he had done this. It made me think about how many times he had to have done it… However much practice he'd had, however, It was by no means a nice ride, though. I had been on planes before, and he was definitely precise and planned, but it wasn't 'no happy ride at Disney'. I held on to his thumb for dear life, still not trusting him to keep me up. If I had the courage to look at his face, I wondered what I would have seen. I could practically feel an aura of smugness emanating from him. The kind you get when you know you've won the battle and the war... and probably enslaved the whole gosh darn planet!

Soon enough (he was walking fast), we arrived at our destination: another table. _Whoopy._ Was my first thought. I had calmed down considerably since I had yelled at him almost ten minutes ago. Now the dread of what I had done sunk in. I hadn't ever really thought about my actions, because, truth be told, I was the goody two-shoes. Who thinks about actions they've never been asked to take? Idiots, that's who. Peer pressure was practically non-existent for me. I wasn't one of the people who would jump at the chance to be part of the 'crowd.' Difference was golden, while similarity was puke green.

No one had ever made it seem like it would be a life-or-death situation. Plus, half the Teachers thought that since I didn't yell and/or complain at them 'I must be a good kid'. I couldn't believe I was thinking of such trivial things at such a moment. But it helped the slightest bit. He could be bringing me over to the table to kill me, and here I was thinking to myself about teachers and school? I had to start getting my priorities straight. Until I realized I didn't have any priorities except for survival.

He put his hand on the table, so I could get off. This was kinda freaking me out, no lie. And I snuck a glance at Starscream to see him watching me with a sharp eye. Probably studying all of my movements or something equally stalker-ish. His hand withdrew as soon as I stepped off. Looking around my surroundings I realized it looked like any other table, except so much bigger than I could ever dream of. There were also tables the height and width you'd need for holding down a human. It also smelled like antiseptic; the universal hospital smell. Oh, and did I mention all of the weird equipment that was between Human size and Transformer size? No? Well, there you go. I stood there for probably four seconds before turning around and looking back up at the being who was going to decide my fate.

He was looking over his shoulder, away from me and toward another table. My first thought was he was going to turn and scream 'boo'. But he didn't even notice me as he turned and grabbed a few different things from the table. Very different things. I'm talking pliers, some kinda circle thingy, and a piece of string… The string scared me the most. He took his sweet time as my mind entranced itself with weird idea's of what would happen when he came back. None of the options were pretty, and most involved me being hurt in some cruel or unusual way. It was a few minutes of me hyperventilating before he even turned to regard me. It was a silent stare-down that I couldn't even participate in. I looked away before it started.

Ready for another animal fact? Sure you are! Well, back to pack mentality, if animals of the same species look directly into each other's eyes it can sometimes be a call for violence. It's a dominance factor. That's the reason dogs won't usually look you directly in the eye, especially when they do something wrong. Truth be told, dogs are submissive and tame from birth. I'm pretty sure Transformers aren't.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him smirk. I glared for a second before he glared back, and I was forced back into 'submission'. Then, with him still glaring, he started putting down his pile of 'stuff'. Being the curious person I was, ever oblivious to danger, I looked over at the pile. It was mismatched and disgruntled, but somehow familiar. I wasn't even sure how that was possible.

Nothing looked remotely human.

Now, I can't even begin to describe what was in the pile, because in truth, nothing looked like anything I had ever seen. It was all huge, too. Nothing like technology we had. Things spiraled, and twisted, and many were straight as a needle. There was also many pieces of what looked like unfinished Decepticon armor looking things. Small, though, much smaller than everything else. I looked up to see Starscream watching, silently. We both said nothing, but I was shaking.

"Can I ask a question?" I finally managed to get out of my throat. Looking up at him, and hating every minute of it. I fingered the bracelet nervously.

"You may." Such a simple reply, but it was packed with a smugness I can't describe. Or want to, for that matter.

"What do you what me-we-us for?" I stumbled over my words. Tense. When I'm edgy I look at my feet, and why should today be any different?

He was silent as I stared down at the floor, praying to God that he didn't decide I was being defiant. Then, he turned and started to gather more stuff. Ignoring me. I wasn't sure what to do as I looked up and watched him. I asked him a question, and he said I could. Why is he being like this?

"Aren't you going to answer? You said I could a-" I was feeling quite gypped as he cut me off with a single word.

"No." He didn't skip a beat." And I said you could ask, not that I would answer."

If only he was human, I found myself thinking angrily yet also fearful. Then as my thoughts ran off without me I was jolted back into the living as Starscream started to talk again. He was demanding when he talked, and I had no doubt that if I didn't listen something bad would happen. At the time, I wasn't all that creative in my torture.

"Besides, do you _really_ want to know? If I was going to kill you in a week, would you really want to know? I might even be planning on brainwashing you, or maybe even making you watch every one of your comrades _die._ Do you want to know now?" I had no answer to that one because, honestly, I didn't want to know. Deciding it was time to switch subjects, I asked something else.

"What are you going to do to me… _today_?" I stressed today, so he knew I didn't want to know anything about the future, just the now. That got him to look at me, and then with his scary smile beaming, he answered honestly.

"Tests. Many of them."

* * *

Starscream knows I am writing this. He thinks it will help 'stabilize' my mind. Pft. He wishes. I appreciate all of you who are reading, please know that from the bottom of my heart I apologize for the delay again. It isn't in me to keep people waiting, but I have been tired. So very tired. I hope this tie's you guy's over for a day or two.


	3. Tests, Needles and Pain

As promised. It is here. A little late in earth time, but I finally got it done. The next chapter... Well, it's going to take a little more time.

Please, do enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own it... I don't even want to own it- actually.

**Warning:** Horrible thoughts, probably suicidal thoughts, and all kinds of awful things. It's not fun. It's not even pretty.

* * *

_Tests, Needles and Pain_

Time meant little as it flew by like a sparrow on wings of fire. I could have been in that huge lab for years, or minutes. I knew it to be closer to days though, since my food came in sporadic portions in between testing. I'd had ten meals since the torture began, which -I hoped- meant that I had only been in pain for three days or so. Sometimes the food was edible and other times I had to throw it back up. Sometimes I just didn't have the strength to eat. The sour, old taste of the bad meals was enough to make me blow chunks. It smelled like old rotten garbage and bread. Even when it was edible, the food seemed to be made up of plastic-coated cardboard with a flavoring akin to oatmeal baked dry. We got one sixteen-ounce bottle of water a day in a cute little container that said "clear and refreshing". Never enough if you ask me. The 'tests' always dried me out.

Aghh. I shiver at the simple _thought _of them. _Tests_. Some were simple, but incredibly painful. Others were more complicated, and those were excruciating to the point of paralyzing. The more intricate they got, the more agonizing were the after effects. None of them were soft tests. I don't think that word was _in _their vocabulary unless it was used to poke fun at the humans. Us. Squishy. Soft. Fleshlings.

The tests ranged from needles being inserted in my tender spots to being physically abused, and all the way over **to** the other end of the spectrum with my mental being actually being analyzed. Believe me when I say you don't want the details. Then again, I honestly can't remember a lot of the details. Pain was about the only constant. It was there in my psyche in heaps. Even though I was given breaks so he could administer the tests to his other experiments, all I remember in those time spans was jumping through hoops and soreness.

My tear ducts had stopped working on the first day. Dried up within the first three hours. Then, after that, I couldn't even muster a tear to my name. Sometimes I wonder if that made me less human. A similarity to my giant robot captors wasn't exactly what I wanted to acknowledge about myself at the moment. Screaming was a horror. I didn't have the strength nor the wetness in my mouth to successfully do it ten times a day. Which was a slow day if Starscream was your captor.

I was also punished mercilessly when I did something deemed 'wrong'. Step right when **he **said forward. Hop once when **he** said twice. Fall when **he** says stand. I once actually did nothing when he told me too, and was given a bottle of water. Extra rations were a god-send. It was times like when, for a second, I forgot that I was supposed to hate the guts of the _thing_ who gave me such gifts. It was a second- a fraction of space and time- but I felt thankful. I never wanted to associate 'thankful' with Starscream, but I did for just that second.

He tore down what little self-esteem I had starting building for myself in high school. It was little. No more than a small little helping of "I can". Then I started constructing a wall of resentment and self-loathing with each piece of _**self**_ he took. At times I'd even find myself staring up at him for some kind of approval throughout the tests. I felt like an abused puppy-dog, or a half-drowned kitten looking toward my savior**. **His reaction was beyond pleased… smug, almost. As he crushed all that was me, he built up a certain sense of admiration and emotionless obedience to replace it. All unwanted.

Ask me six months ago, and I would have said "I'm my own person, not even the president can make me do what I don't want." That was something a kid with self-confidence would say. It sounded like me at age nine, telling my mom I didn't want to ride the school bus because I was still just a kid. I felt as though I hadn't been myself for years. Only days into my nightmare, however, it had already gotten to the point where Starscream told me to jump, and I asked how high. As much as I hated that submission, it was the only thing that kept me alive. I knew Starscream would have killed me if I was alive any longer than he wanted me to be. That was also my fallback plan, if this got beyond what I could handle. Get him angry enough to kill me, or just plain piss him off. Death would come in time- I was sure.

Sometimes, in-between sessions of torture, I would catch myself sobbing tearlessly. I'd dream of the could-have-beens and the what-ifs, just hoping he would kill me already. In a place not even close to life, death seemed like the only option to us all. I remember talking to everyone else in the cages later on. They'd been asking for death from the beginning, but some little human emotion held us back. Stupid instincts. I've cursed them a lot my entire time here. And that's why I'm still here telling this story. A little bit of self-preservation can go a long way.

It was somewhere in-between the eleventh and twelfth feedings that the tests became more… mind oriented. Pain wasn't administered every time, and my mind was finally able to feel other emotions than the angry or negative ones. Relief was the first. Sometimes I was even forced to feel happy. It was rare, and unfortunately the only 'happy' I ever got was when I did something 'wrong', but Starscream didn't punish me. Akin only to stealing a cookie from the cookie-jar and not getting caught. Getting away Scott-free with something punishable. I now understood what it meant to be addicted.

Sometimes, he would give me the slightest break, and I had a _feeling_ that he was developing favoritism for me. Give me an extra ration here- a bit of warmth there. Then other times I would _know_ he hated me to the deepest parts of hell. Deliberately tell me to do something I couldn't do- shock me out of turn- hate me. Despise my very existence and tell me about it every four minutes. He was two-faced, in every meaning of the word.

The latest of all the mindless tests was memory. Which, quite frankly, I was even worse at than sports. Me, the person who would fall over my own feet? I usually couldn't remember what I'd had for breakfast. Funny how I'm reiterating my entire life now, huh? He would give me a list of words on a small data pad thing to memorize. I'd do it. The data pad was like an advanced phone, but without the keys, just a screen. The first time I held it, it was like an artifact from some kind of alien sci-fi movie. Then it hit me: It was. I felt like a Star Trek wannabe. At first the test was something easy- ten to fifteen words. When I got them right he didn't shock me, but when I got them wrong… that was another story. Long agonizing stories filled with tenderness and suffering that really needn't be explained. Even months past I cringe at the thought of his punishment style.

I would advance from one word group to another with maybe three or four terms added into a new batch of words. I was on thirty words, only three letters each, but increasingly hard to remember because of the tiny differences between cat and hat, and dog and bog, and pig and jig, and so many others it was getting out of hand. Of course, to add to the fun, there was another list of words that he wanted me _not_ to say. I had a time limit, too. One minute. _Whoop-dee-freakin-do_. I thought, finally able to get a grip on my sarcastic humor, which I had thought lost.

As I stared at the list of words and thumbed my temples, the diminutive timer on my bracelet beeped, signifying my deadline was, in fact, over. _Buzzt-buzzt_. I jumped slightly fearful, worried because I had only gotten at most twenty three memorized. The new feature of my band of metal that read _1000HG_, wasn't lost on me. But it did give me a heart attack every time it squealed and vibrated.

As I searched frantically over the words again, and again, long cables snaked down from Starscream's finger and twisted out into smaller cables which plucked my data pad from my hands. I couldn't even find it in myself to feel angry or surprised. He was just like that. He processed the data faster than I could read it, uploading new words onto the data pad at the same time. Reading and creating at the same time. It gave me a few extra seconds to calm my frazzled mind. It was getting more drained and dinged up than the last time.

"Speak." He commanded in a snarl, reading the words in his mind. He wasn't in a good mood this time. He would be happy one moment- ecstatic, really- and then he would literally spit fire. I still don't know how that works, it just did. Not sure because I was the one being studied. The lab-rat. How was I to understand how he spat fire?

Repeating almost twenty of them without getting shocked was a nice feeling- empowering. Then I got to words that I knew weren't on the list. Like fog, and tee. I stuttered a bit pulling out a few more. Sweat was a big part of my life by now- a nervous habit. It trickled down my shoulder blades as I snagged words from my memory. I needn't make another mistake like last time. I had said 'dog' instead of 'fog'- he was pissed, I was tired, and it erupted into a painful three-hour-long obsession of his that sated his thirst for punishment. First lesson I ever learned in this underground hell: Mistakes meant pain. The second was, of course, to eat before someone else eats your food.

"Dog, bog, fo-" I stopped myself and looked up into Starscream's optics hoping he didn't hear my blunder. I stuttered along into other words, flickering my eyes to the ground. Nervous habits die hard. I stumbled on through as he looked at me pointedly. I could feel the glare. My hands were sweating, because I wasn't sure what was going to happen. "Ugh… uhm, cat, rat, bee." I had successfully named twenty-nine three-letter words; the last one was eluding my grasp. _Of course_. I thought cynically to myself. A half-second passed with me grappling with my mind over memory.

"Word. Now." He said, in his imposing manner. Over the past who-knows-how-many days he had used only two or three-worded explanations or, better yet, commands. Probably part of the testing. He'd not actually said a word of tests- but I wasn't an idiot. I knew when I was being tested.

"Fat." I pulled out at the last second when I saw that he was ready to shock me for my slip-up. I grasped at my hair in anticipation for a shock. It helped to have a grip on something, anything. Hair worked especially great because only the roots felt the pull when you were shocked. My hands clenched and I waited with eyes clamped shut. When no shock came, I looked up just in time for him to narrow his eyes horribly and smile.

"Good." He all but purred at me, putting his hand on the table- palm up. He actually looked satisfied.

I didn't even hesitate to climb on. The last time I had taken too long I had paid for it. Dearly. My wrist bracelet that I had nicknamed 'pain and punishment' -P & P for short- had gotten two times bigger and shocked me sporadically in between sleep 'cycles'. I also found out that when I was punished through it, it grow another fourth of an inch or so. I wasn't great with measuring things, and I didn't have tape measurers and such. I could just tell. It wasn't just a bracelet anymore, but more of a forearm-metal contraption, like one you might find on a superhero like Wonder Woman or Superman. I still scoff at the image. Not likely I'll become one of those two anytime soon… I didn't have extraordinary strength, or even the energy to hold it up for longer than a few minutes. So, for most of the day it hung limply by my side. I had an aching suspicion that it was made of some metal that was heavier than steel. The weird part? It was almost paper-thin. I'm not saying it was actually as thin as paper, but it was closer than most metals could ever get. And it weighed a ton and a half.

Starscream walked with me in hand over to another table, one that had previously been my 'physical testing unit.' It held many physical torture devices. I held on to his thumb, not wanting to fall and feeling increasingly nauseated. Torture on an empty stomach was hard. Before the memory test, I'd had another one which I had failed quite miserably. I had been in pain for hours afterward.

"Your analysis is completed."

I had just stepped off of his hand, expecting to find some torture waiting for me. I looked up at him with eyes wide. Remarkably, after all I'd been through that week, I could still feel shock. So many questions rang through my head, too many to repeat. I wasn't sure if scoring even mattered, but all of the sudden I was scared. I felt as though I had taken a huge math final; the teacher was standing in front of my desk with paper in hand, ready to give it to me but holding out to the last minute. Did I pass? What did passing even do?

"How-w'd… I do-o?" I stuttered, falling into an old pattern I had thought outgrown. I stopped myself from asking any more- because I'd broken my own rule. No back-talk or questions. I didn't want to be punished. I also didn't want to know the bad things that were inevitably going to happen. Starscream inexplicably made me rebel and submit at the same time. Then again, Starscream made a lot of things happen. Self-consciousness and self-loathing, to name a few.

"Acceptable. Abnormality: Stable."

I was immediately relieved that he had said 'acceptable'. It meant more than I ever thought it would mean. Then, I was confused. Abnormality? What does that have to do with anything… I waited for him to tell me something else. Anything else. I had long since learned not to question him further… he didn't like it. It didn't stop me wondering, though.

He said no more as he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me on the table. Through the 'Door', he went. I wasn't cowardly enough to jump off the table and commit suicide. My faith also had laws against that which made me conscious of ever trying to harm myself. It was one of the last things I held onto in this place.

I shivered as the temperature dropped. That was one of the worst parts. The cold. The fact that you only got warm when 'your Transformer' was near. The fact that Starscream knew that. Used it. Made me submit in ways I wasn't happy about. Way's I didn't even know I could. I knew hunger was one tool he used often- along with sleep. He would dangle morsels of happiness just out of reach and then, right when I was about to get them, I would be punished.

I slumped onto the table, enjoying the moments of silence and freedom. I felt the need to cry, but almost laughed at the thought. I wiped at my eyes anyways, hoping for a tear to drop. I knew I didn't have any liquids in my body to give up. My eyes always felt dry as the Sahara desert in mid-June. I was so devoid of life, I seemed like a robot myself. It made me cringe.

Little things stopped me from being the woman I wanted to be. The human I want to be. I craved _human _contact like a plant to its sun. I talked in small clipped sentences whenever I answered a question. I never talked back, because it was unspeakably painful. The punishment, that is. I missed Chris, and Juliet, and Ryan- my fake family. My real family felt so long gone. It was like I was watching my emotions and memories through rose-colored glasses, and they had just been removed. Victor, Mom, Joe, Mitch, Jon, Lizzy, Abigail, and Tim… Sometimes I couldn't remember their faces.

I was staring at my shoes when I hear the door hiss open. The familiar hydraulics and gears turned. It made me respond faster than someone saying "free food" to a homeless man. Looking up dejectedly, I saw Starscream carrying something, but my eyes were a little blurry from the rubbing I had given them. As I got a better look, I realized that it was a cage. My eyes flickered to Starscream's optics, and I blinked. Uncurling, I stood up to get a better look. I guess I must have looked like a puppy you'd woken up with a new chew toy, by Starscreams expression.

My week was up. My legs went weak as I realized what that meant. It was almost unbelievable. Almost. I was going to see them again. My friends who I'd only known for a day. The people who kept me going. The one's who were going through what I did. Humans. My kind of messed up, fake family. Hope restored for a brief moment. A warm feeling starting on its own-

Then my mind crashed as Starscream set the cage on the table. I could see people inside it, but no one was Juliet or even Ryan. Or Chris. There were two girls and seven boys, all crammed into one measly cage. They didn't even look at me, as I looked at them. Out of nine people that had been crammed in a cage, not one of them was my 'family'. Human contact was so close, though. I didn't care who at the moment. Serial killer, rapist, or even Ronald McDonald- it didn't matter. Seeing them out of reach was like someone holding a bag of cocaine to someone addicted to the stuff. I was addicted to being human. It's also called 'survival of the fittest'- but I like the addiction analogy better.

Starscream picked me up and put me in the cage. Slowly. Deliberately. I didn't even try and make a noise or movement, knowing not to anger him. I felt like a slave, and he was the master. Apparently as it should be. I wished I could conform myself into a sniffling mess, just so that I could be somewhat human again. But Starscream had taken something from me. Crying wasn't an option. I wasn't ready to rebel against him. I wanted to live- not die. I wasn't sure what he had taken, yet, either. I wanted to scream at my own lack of 'human-isms'.

As Starscream set me down in the cage, three people had the courage to look up at me. Weakly, but still confidently. I stepped off his hand clumsily, so tired and exhausted that it made me self-consciously stupid.

"Congratulations, Humans." We all looked up, like we'd been _trained_ to do when a being of higher importance talked to you- like a Transformer. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes, in my mind, they were a being of higher importance. Then other times, I was back to being a fanatic about their unrealness and still stuck on the fact they existed at all. Now Starscream wasn't his usual smirking self. He was controlled, and cold. Anger, Happiness, Smugness: all gone. It shocked me enough that it actually showed on my own emotionless face. Emotions other than pain and unhappiness were so strange to me now; relief was an emotion I was even less used to.

But when Starscream talked, I couldn't help but be captivated, because I had only heard nothing but his voice for the past few days. He'd been my captor, my master, and now I couldn't stop myself from respecting him and his danger. Too many punishments had happened. Too many pains. I felt like an object.

"The surviving number of humans is now down to nine-hundred seventy-three. A slight margin of less than a percent were not of this experiment's material qualities. Group 12 is cage 43. You. You are 'the cream of the crop' as you would say it." He was snooty, but emotionless. Better than you. "Your genetic, mental, and physical abilities are on a higher level than we had calculated. In other batches, we have only gotten a margin of .002 percent of capable flesh. This batch is luckily at .01. In human, that means you have a better chance of surviving."

Smugness couldn't be kept out of his voice as he talked about us like we were all flies, and he had singlehandedly saved us from our boring twenty-four-seven lives. I wasn't sure how to take the news of being 'the best.' After being smashed into the ground by this very Transformer, praise was not to be taken lightly. I felt almost like he was praising only me. I can't speak for what the others felt; it was wonderful to be thought highly of, even coming from Starscream. I'd never really gotten that at home.

I shivered immediately afterwards, understanding what he'd said. The torture, the probing… it was like culling the herd. The ones they'd killed were not even acceptable with the tests, so they'd been disposed of. A large part of me rebelled at the idea of so much life lost just because it could be. A smaller part- so small I wasn't even sure if I should be feeling it- was just happy I was seeing another day, another meal, and another sight to behold, even if there weren't many of them here to begin with.

That small part didn't feel pity for any of the 'non-surviving', just a kind of marvel that they'd gotten out earlier than the rest of us. Starscream had practically assured me that I would not be living past six months from that point. I believed him wholeheartedly. Now I regret it. I feel almost lied to now, six months past, and I'm still here on this plane. I'd expected to see my maker. Now I'm not even sure if I count as one of his subjects.

"The next part of your experimentation shall be starting soon. Warning is in advance so you can prepare yourself for the pain. I've learned that you fleshlings, last longer when talked to." He scoffed, as though it was as silly as talking kindly to plants to make them grow better. He rolled his glowing red optics, which had scared me our first meeting.

He continued muttering, and talking about the experiment. Singing its praises. We all got sick of it fast, but I knew for a fact not one of us was going to say anything. We just silently bided our time. Starscream eventually started onto another topic, and muttered something I couldn't hear. On some unknown mission, he suddenly started walking toward the door. We all looked up, and waited for some unknown signal from the closing door.

When he was out of sight and the door hissed shut, it was as though someone had literally lit a fire under some of the people in the cage. They jumped up out of their stupor, and started talking animatedly to each other. One girl took off her shoes for some reason. Their eyes sparkled in a way I hadn't seen in a long time. Rebellious teenagers again. They'd already gathered together, in groups of two or three. Quite a few came over to talk to me, the new girl. Never all together though. Must have been taboo or such. Never figured it out. Maybe I was just an outcast. Maybe they thought I was a spy. Too long away from the herd and you were considered suspicious.

A tall, blond-headed girl with dark brown eyes walked over first, smiling an overly friendly smile. It didn't belong in such a bleak place, but I suddenly felt just a small spark of life. When I got the chance I read her small bracelet- 0031HG. I stood as she walked over and began to talk. And talk. And talk. I rubbed P & P, feeling it chafe and rub my wrist raw.

"Hiya, my name's Lindsey. Why weren't you put in our cage when the others were? We've all pretty much bonded. Were you getting, like, special treatment? Cuz none of us have been out of this cage in like- five days. Is the Transformer who talked to us our new keeper? Are we-" She just kept asking questions, and I would answer at the appropriate times, when it seemed that she actually meant to question me. She had little stories for every question. A lot of them she thought I actually had the answers to. She talked about our predicament like my mother would talk about the weather, or dirt. Natural. Her voice was almost a literal music to my ears.

I was so happy with just standing and listening, that I hardly realized that another person had come to join us. He was a nice-looking guy. A kind of medium height, with sandy hair and blue, blue eyes. And he was tanner than most people who went to a tanning salon, making me think that he might have been Hispanic. But he didn't look it, like most did. Then again, I didn't care how to place him in the world's eyes. He was human. Welcome. His bracelet read 0009HM. I still had no clue what the numbers represented.

"Lindsey, give her a break." And the most amazing thing happened: she shut up. She forced a happy smile and for the first time I realized was just that: forced. She uttered a 'goodbye', before walking over to another group and talking animatedly with them. When I tore my eyes away from her to him, I realized he wasn't all happy-go-lucky-smiling like Lindsey was. His eyes were serious, and he didn't smile. Then again, neither did I. Not for a long while, anyways.

I'll never forget that when our eyes met, I felt all of the trials he'd gone through, because they showed in the way his eyes were broadcasting. His eyes were pained, but otherwise he showed none of it. His thoughts were obscured but I could tell he was broken like me. A toy that transformers were misguided into 'fixing'. When I looked at his bracelet it was almost as large as mine.

It's indescribable. Immediate kinship. I'd never felt this close to a complete stranger. I felt almost like saying "Yeah, happened to me too." But I didn't. It wasn't appropriate. Instead, I lifted the hand without the bracelet, and introduced myself. Normal etiquette.

"I'm Jessica." I hadn't talked much since the 'Memorizational Test' and I felt empowered and free for a change, although still a little pained. I could now talk and think. It was amazing. Starscream wasn't around to zap me. Torment me. He couldn't hurt me because he couldn't see me do anything wrong. Empowered as I was, I didn't push it. Too much pain for that. My heart skipped a beat as he shook my hand. His warm, but slightly calloused hand sent a shiver of delight running up my spine. I'll admit that I never wanted to let go. Human contact never felt so vivid.

"Ben."

The only thing I can compare it to is being away from chocolate forever, and then suddenly being able to get the faintest taste. You'd never go back to vanilla again. That's how it felt. Like Starscream was Vanilla and this person in front of me, just like that Lindsey girl, was chocolate. Warm and welcoming. While all the while Starscream, the vanilla always stayed in my memories. Simple and commanding.

"You don't know how long I've craved human contact." I finally managed from my overly dry lips. They twitched with the desire to smile at the dry humor of everything. It was like meet and greet brought on by giant robot. Bringing back faint and sketchy memories of my family. I hoped words weren't needed.

"We all know, believe me. We know." It was understanding wrapped in a kind of pity-loathing. _Being a guy must be hard_, I thought suddenly, _and_ _not being in_ control. For me- before this- I knew that if I ever found a guy, I wouldn't be in charge of anything really. He'd be the bread-winner, and I'd be the mother. No anti-fem stuff… but I wanted to be a mother. Who knew what went through guys mind's? I'm certain it's not: "Okay honey, I'm just going to go do laundry because I care so much about you- not in fact about getting in your pants.." Not sure I could handle that kind of 'devotion.'

I said nothing though as I shook his hand, almost refusing to let go. His grip was firm, and strong. He didn't want to let go now, either. With an almost regretful smile, I let go. Not knowing what to say. He said nothing. And it seemed as though we were in limbo.

I didn't mind it one bit.

Then exhaustion came on fast, like a cheetah stalking its prey. My knees almost buckled and I fell forward- right into Bens arms. He smelled like motor oil and grease, but warmer than robot. Embarrassed, I tried to right myself apologizing and thanking him profusely. My legs wouldn't collaborate. They felt like the wiggliest jelly around, with toothpicks as the bones holding me up. And the tingle was almost too warm.

"Are you O.K.?" He asked, putting me lower to the ground so that I could sit without his help. With a shiver I apologized again and again. People weren't staring- but it was getting uncomfortable. It was almost second nature now. Doubting myself. His hand on my shoulder was comforting. It reminded me of my brother Victor. Sitting down, I looked up at him and realized that in the right glare of the lights- he looked angelic.

"I'm fine. Just haven't eaten in a while. That's all." He nodded, as though it was a normal thing and sat down next to me. I didn't realize how small the cage was- until I leaned back and touched the bars. They were cold but harmless, and very comforting to my aching back. I sighed as I looked over at Ben, seeing him looking at his shoe laces in dejected silence. Quiet filled the room soon enough. Everyone sat and enjoyed the simple fact that they were alive for another day. We sat in silence for a long time.

"I was on my way to my grandma's house." Ben said suddenly. I looked over at him slowly. We caught each other's eyes, and he continued without pausing. "When it happened. It was her eighty-ninth birthday. My family was driving up from everywhere to see her. Alabama, Chicago, Albatross, Mexico. It was going to be the bash of the century! I'd taken time off work- about a week. Couldn't get any more without losing my job. See, I'm a reporter. Give me the scoop on anything, and I'll write about it. Not many jobs like that now." He paused, preparing himself. It was clear he hadn't told this story very often. If ever. But I understood talking helped. So I nodded.

"I was driving on the highway- pulled off to get gas. Paid an arm and a leg at some name brand gas station and turned to leave. Then boom! There it was. A 1991 Ford with a little roof thing on its bed. Truck was huge- looming even. Dark green, too. Should have known not to trust green. I'm usually a good judge of character. Not this time."

"This guy got out and starting to talk with me as I finished filling my gas tank. I tried to get out of it. Tell him about how my grand-mammy's bash was about to start in less than three hours, how it was the first time I'd seen my family since I moved out. I'd had a falling-out with my family- this was our reunion. Guy's got these wicked sunglasses and a beard that could suffocate someone and he says "Well, 'eh, why don't I show you a good present for a ninety-year-old broad?

"I, of course, say "Why not?" Hadn't gotten my grand-mammy a present yet- was waiting to get in town. But anyone with the scoop about women- well, hell. You got to trust them. So I walked to the back of his truck with him, and he waved me over with his hand. Like this…" He demonstrated, waving it like someone wanting to show you a cool present. Ben was really getting into the story, gesturing and talking lowly. I was mesmerized as he told his story. Partly because I knew what the end was. The same as everyone else in the room.

"Then, soon as I'm close enough to see, he lifts me up and shoves me in the back. I'm not light. I weigh a good two-twenty. I was damn shocked as the roof locked and the engine revved. It was a second later that I was off- kidnapped in the back of some old coot's truck."

"I can't explain what I felt. I was scared and shocked. No sense lying to myself. Then after he exclaimed his superiority over the loud speakers he gassed me. Thought he was going to kill me- then I woke up here. And the rest is history."

I smiled. Weak and shallow as it was, it was all I could give for reassurance. Things were getting kind of hazy before I blinked them away.

"I was at school. Police officer said my oldest brother, Victor, had been in an accident- I freaked. Practically threw myself at him. Never noticed anything off until the car started talking to me and the doors locked. Too busy hyperventilating to care. Got gassed… Nothing much after that. Just pain." I was whispering quietly- almost afraid that as soon as the words left my mouth, they would become reality. I winced as I remembered. I had tried without success to forget. I draped myself across my knees, staring at the cold dead ground. Ben touched my arm. I draped myself across my knees, staring at the cold dead ground. Ben touched my arm.

"When's the last time you slept?" He asked. I must have looked a mess. Hair every which way- probably bleeding out of pores I didn't know about.. Bags under my eyes, most likely breaking out with acne. I could picture myself a mess. It wasn't hard. Mirrors weren't exactly provided to us.

"Last night. Maybe an hour of sleep every ten minutes. Was always woken up by this thing." I pointed to P& P to emphasize my point. It had grown from the last time I was shocked. Now it slightly curved over my wrist- building itself nearer to the fingers. I got side-tracked and marveled at how strange the device was. Shows how easily distracted I was after the whole ordeal.

"You should sleep then. They usually allow us at least two hours of sleep before being woken up." I thought about it. He was right. So, without further ado, I lay down with my back to the bars and my head near him. Not a whole lot of options for sleeping arrangements. No beds or couches, even a pillow would have been amazing. Nothing was given to us though. I'll tell you just how hard it is to sleep on cold ground. It's horrible. Ever tried to sleep in an awkwardly uncomfortable position? I've been doing it every night. It's horribly aching and even a little embarrassing sometimes. I hadn't cared about my dignity in a long while, though.

Sleep is also_** scary**_. That's why I get less than anyone else. Dreams give me hope that I know will be crushed. I've read fanfiction. There are some original stories- but in those stories- people die. I could be a casualty. I didn't want that. I was already a casualty in everyone else's mind. All nine hundred some odd of us- we were casualties in a war I knew everything and nothing about. I could have had lies whispered to me through television, computers, and even books for years.

Since Transformers **are** real though, that means not everything was a lie. Some stuff had to be truth. I just wasn't sure what. In a place where lies and truths were close companions, I wasn't sure how to tell the difference. So, I did what any sane human would do. I pushed it to the back of my mind and hoped beyond hope that everything was only a dream.

I never really slept- but when Starscream came back in, I felt exhausted. Mentally and physically. That's when he told us about the next part of our 'experimentation'. Smirking once again, and his eyes flashing with excitement, he spoke.

"We're going to make you better."

Yeah. Right.

* * *

The next part is a lot worse than this. I won't even try and sugar coat things. Things... happen.

But enough of that, I thank you again for listening to one lone experiment. Starscream also wants me to tell you all this is apparently helping me. Go figure? It's _absolutely_ not him threatening me. It's this- always. -sigh-

Have a nice week everyone.


	4. The Truth Hurts

**I am just going to apologize for my extended absence. Then, I'm going to say sorry, also, for the fact that I was being punished for speaking my mind. Not really a surprise, just I hadn't expected Starscream to put me in solitary confinement... For almost three months.**

**Honestly, three months? That's messed up, even for a giant robot...**

**I'll stop talking, I'll tell you guys about that later, probably...**

**Here ya go-  
**

* * *

**Chapter 4: "The Truth Hurts"**

There are tons of sayings I thought I understood. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Love lost is love found. No one goes through life unscathed. Easy come, easy go. The calm before the storm. Truth is stranger than fiction. It was so natural that I understood those simple sentences so effortlessly. **I **was the _smart one_.** I** knew what was _going to happen_ to myself in the cold cruel world of fate and reality. Nothing stood in my way except me and myself. The words 'I can't' were used sparingly. I knew- but was blinded by ignorance. Not so anymore.

Pain isn't red hot or even fast, not in my personal hell anyways. Its ice cold and it lasts forever. I woke aching and sleep sore. The ground is so cold, and when it gets warm- it gets hot. Burning hot. Starscream's version of 'better' was making us all sick and weak. When would we ever be helpful to him in that state? I felt like what I would assume a cancer patient going through chemo would be feeling. Wanting to empty my stomach every hour, head-aches that could put a jack-hammer to shame, and endless suffering. The first week went by slowly… and then we started dropping like flies.

But you don't even know why we became 'cancer patients on chemo' or even why we started dying. I'll start when Starscream told us we would be better. Then again, we never trusted Starscreams word before.

When Starscream came in on that fateful day- he told us he would make us **better**. My stomach flip-flopped when I heard that, and it dropped to way below my feet. Nothing had even started yet, and I was already feeling sick. Next to me, Ben's hand clenched in a fist and he and I both gravitated toward each other. Others in our cage did the same thing- no one was alone.

I hadn't noticed the other bot next to Starscream until it was too late. Shiny, huge, towering, and so jitter with its movements. Starscream looked at him and as if they were silently talking to each other, beckoned for him to look at us. We all looked up at the display of carelessness. Starscream was nothing if not protective of us. Only he was allowed to punish us and make us feel despair. We watched as the bot walked forward- looking us over, with nothing more than a glimmer of recognition in its eyes.

I loved transformers before all this. They were the coolest thing since sliced bread. If they'd been created or found out about before sliced bread- it wouldn't change my opinion. They were cooler than the wheel. Cooler than ice. I wrote stories all about normal people with everyday lives turning into them. Granted they were brought to the Transformer life by Decepticons, and I can't help but feel that its ironic, but it was a common theme in my Transformer stories. At least the ones I've wrote, and that doesn't include stories I haven't posted yet. It was a plot device. What kind of plot device is that? I never realized the pain my characters must have had done to them behind the scenes. I could guess. I could sympathize. I could never willingly go through with it. This bot in front of me looked like something out of my nightmarish stories. Ready and willing to do evil things.

He was a bot proportioned similarly to Starscream. Huge wings, and skinny limbs. _Another flyer probably. _I thought amiably to myself. His eyes were red hot accented with a square face. He had a face mask too, something I wasn't sure if they honestly needed. He was huge and bulky- but something told me that he was actually skinner than most of his kind. If he was actually a male. He was looking us all over with a critical eye, almost thoughtfully. He looked over two or three groups briefly- before settling on Ben and I. It was then that I realized that I was the only one trying to make eye contact. Curiosity. Didn't it kill a cat or something? I cursed myself in my head and lowered my eyes- hoping that whatever he needed he wouldn't find it in me. Damn, if I was only that lucky.

"That one." His voice I could have sworn his voice fizzed - almost like a garbage disposal that learned English. Then, I realized what he'd just said. My heart dropped. No one looked up but I knew it was me. How could I not? He had hesitated over me at least a second longer than everyone else. My suspicions were confirmed when Starscream snatched me out of my cage and brought me to the other bots palm much faster his than usual pace. It normally took about three seconds- I'm pretty sure he did it in one.

"This one is interesting. More abnormal than the rest. 'Spunky'. Good choice." He sounded almost proud as he dumped me unceremoniously into the bot's hand. I tumbled and rolled for a moment before landing on my backside and rubbing my rumbling head. I didn't moan or groan because this wasn't anything compared to what I'd experienced with Starscream. Considering everything, it was actually pretty gentle. There would be a bruise, but when wasn't there when dealing with a giant metallic-alien race?

"I'll be back within the vorn." Was the calm response. And then he bowed and walked off with me in tow. I wondered how important Starscream was, and then I felt miffed that I was passed around like a hot potato. I'm still not sure how you would feel if you were picked up whenever they wanted to do it. A moment's notice is too much for them. It's nauseating and restraining, but usually only painful if you're scared of heights- which thankfully I'm not. Too many airplane rides for that to ever happen. I also refuse to be scared of Airplanes. It's a stupid and irrational fear. Now, fear of robots? Plausible.

I didn't speak as he opened the door and let the blinding brightness hit my retinas full force. I shivered as the almost sub-zero temperatures hit me with the light. Darkness was warmer than light, what world was I living in? I'd been living in dim lighting for who-knows-how-long and the rays made my eyes water. I swiped a grubby hand over my eyes to move the moisture. I pulled Chris's jacket closer to me- fighting off a little of the biting, frigid air.

I had no clue where I was being taken. No surprise at that, but my mind sometimes would wonder. Wondering minds led to dangerous thoughts. The sense of foreboding I was getting told me it wasn't good though. I tried to look at the bot and figure him out. No luck. From my angle I could tell he was completely set on the task at hand. He was purple and black. **Such a strange color combination**. I knew one of the Transformers had a similar color combination, but I honestly wasn't sure who. I didn't think much more on it as he said nothing to me. He practically left me alone with the lull of his walking. It was rhythmic and I _so_ wanted to fall asleep. It was a struggle to stay awake.

Right as my eyes were closing, though I felt the hiss of air before I saw it. The bot holding me had opened a hydraulic door and was proceeding into a very dark room. It was instant. I was awake. Adrinaline pumped through my system, and I knew sleep would be eluding me for at least a couple of hours. Darkness was all around me except for red eyes and a glow far back in the room. I shivered- not cold this time- but fearful. It was eerie. There was no sound at all except the tapping and clacking of metal as Mr. Purple and Black walked on- oblivious to my obvious distress.

Once we reached the 'glow' I wished we hadn't. All that was in the room was a table. A simple clean metal table- with tons of little white things on it. As I looked closer, I realized the white material was a large number of little table-chairs- the kind you find in a doctor's office that reclines when commanded to. Each of them big enough for one teenager; and enough of them for hundreds of us. Us, as in humans.

I clutched the hand holding me as he started lowering it to the table- near a table-chair-thingy in the front. I couldn't speak as terror gripped my heart. Until this point, we hadn't been restrained. Restraining someone usually meant that common sense and rationality would abandon us. Torture. My head tore up to look at the bot,silently pleading with him. He didn't even glance at me. Carelessly, he tumbled me to the table.

You don't know that feeling. You can't. No one _should_ know it. Pure dread. It's going to happen. Nothing will stop it. And Dammit, I couldn't even cry. Cry! The most basic of human emotional response to pain and hurt- and I was void. I wanted so badly to run and never look back. I could only sit brokenly as he powered up his holoform. Shaking. I was still rational at this point. There was nowhere to go. No place to run. The table was huge, sure, but that didn't mean it didn't have an end.

It was larger than me, the 'Droid', not even close to human looking. 'Droid' would be the best way to describe it. When I looked into its visor, I couldn't even tell if it acknowledged me. It was a staring contest where the only victor there would ever be was him. It sent shivers down my spine. Then it picked me up, as if I was a toddler, and unceremoniously dropped me onto the hard table. The first thing to pop out at me? The table was cold. It started warming up to me. I had a moment to feel vertigo before he expertly started strapping me in, as if he'd done it a thousand times. That's when the tears started falling. One, then two. It wasn't much, and I hadn't quite regained all the water used for my water-working. I didn't move and it didn't stop, but I shook as I held in the sobs.

The 'Droid' didn't stop or even glance over at me, and soon I was all tied up. It was stupid of me to think that was where it ended. He rolled up my jacket sleeves expertly and shoved at least four different needles into my arm. It didn't help I was deathly afraid of needles, and that it hurt like hell. I winced when he started up a machine under my chair-thingy and stared in shock as multicolored liquid ran through the tubes attached to my arm. Nothing that color should have been close to my body on a good day. It looked down right lethal. The tubes were held up by a long metal-hospital pole thing. I didn't know the name for it. I sniffled and looked into the droids visor once again- hoping for just an ounce of patience, understanding, mercy… I got none. He disappeared as a wave of liquid fire lapped my veins. A new hoard of sobs launched from my throat and I tried in vain to move my hands to take the needles out. It didn't help. A minute in I fell unconscious. Maybe, there was some kind of humanity in these beings.

When I woke up the first time, four more people had joined me- within the hour, the rest of my group was brought in and strapped kicking and screaming onto their respective chairs. At this point I was so loopy I was smiling. It wasn't long before other groups were also strapped in; in all we had about five hundred. Ben was right next to me, and he got to watch firsthand the drugs running through my system. Half of the process I was unconscious, and the other half I was screaming in agony. Afterwards, I would be so tired I would cry myself to sleep with dry sobs.

No one talked- we all suffered in silence. Ben would give me a look with his kindred eyes and I could last another hour, two, a day, another.

That's how it went for a week. Suffer, sleep, be force fed food, more torture and then sleep. The cycle continued viciously, and I was so out of it by the end I had actually had called Starscream's holoform, the human one, Papa. He snorted and turned away- mumbling about 'stupid humans.'

Then one day I woke up, exhausted. No surprise there, but I _was_ shocked at what was happening in the realm of awareness. Lindsey, on the table to the right of me, was being unhooked and un-needled. The unspeakable. _They're letting someone go? _I thought sluggishly. I got a closer look and a good sniff and realized what was actually happening.

They were the garbage disposal. Death hung around her as her body was dragged off the table into the waiting hand of a Decepticon. Want to know the worst part? I couldn't even feel sorry, worried, _guilty_… I was drugged up on a plane higher than Pluto, and I felt awed, feeble, and strangely okay. I shouldn't have felt okay, but I couldn't bring myself to care. Lindsey was dead. All I could do was fall back asleep.

The next day, I think, I woke to find seven more people dead and a sharp, dull pain in my leg. I looked down and saw a sight that will most likely haunt me the rest of my life. My arm. It was not there. I mean, there was an arm- but it was metal, and hard, and so very not human. _Not mine._ I thought to myself, staring at it. I turned my head to look at Ben. He was missing a leg. I wondered briefly how long it'd been gone. Some guy to my far left was missing his leg as well, but he was asleep, unaware of the fact.

For no apparent reason other than the obvious, I flipped out and screamed. Never so loud, and never so hard had I yelled. My lungs gasped for air but all I could do was scream, yell, and sob. It was my moment of release- I promised myself It would be the last. I can't count the promises I've broken.

Probably wondering why I kept silent for a lot of it? Well, that's how I handle things- silently. Till I had to scream. It's not easy- but I'm trying to keep going. For Ben, Chris, Ryan, Juliet, for Lindsey, for the girl with the red hair puking off the side of her table, the guy who hadn't stopped screaming for days, and that guy who yelled for his daughter night after night. I don't want to die. No one wants it. I used to tell myself that I was too young to die. Yeah, well so was Lindsey. So was that kid who talked about his family when he wasn't screaming or sleeping. So was Ben.

When I stopped screaming, I sat and stared at the light- hoping to blind myself so I wouldn't see any more of Starscreams doings. You don't develop desperation overnight. It slowly grows, and eventually there comes a day when you don't even remember times when this wasn't life. How can I remember life, when all I see is death? How can I remember smile when the word sounds foreign to my situation? How- How can I be a Christian and just give up? It was times like this that I just looked into the light and asked God to save us all. I wasn't pulling for a miraculous save- just freedom. I didn't get it. I couldn't see the bigger picture then, I can see an outline now. It's small. So very small.

It was sometime in the second week that we were taken off our drugs. Needles unplugged, and released. It was automatic- they just came off. We were unsupervised for a few moments and I could tell what was going to happen immediately as I sat up and watched the small group. I think there were three hundred left in all. The numbers quickly fell as I saw a few people walk to the edge of the table. They didn't stop. It was as casual as walking to the bathroom. Needed to be done. They didn't look back, didn't wave goodbye, they just did it.

Ben came and sat at my table with me as we watched people debating to follow. My arm swung lifelessly at my side as we saw the red headed girl walk off with a pit-patt. Her 'hand' hung lifelessly, and swung up with her descent. The next sound was of her hitting the bottom. _Splat_. I was past cringing. Past trying to escape. Was it really worth it? To just jump off the table? I just pulled Chris's ruined jacket tighter to me and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of another following.

I don't know what you think of me- but I was _so_ **numb**. My best friend could have told me she was getting married and I would have been unfazed. Why get married with all this going on? Then I laughed bitterly as I realized that Amanda lived in a perfect world of little cottage houses, families, and dreams. My laugh became strained and Ben didn't say anything as I cried silently bawling my eyes out. Nobody would looked over and watched, because that's invasive. We needed that little bit of privacy- home, to call ours. We would go crazy without it.

Then Starscream came in, surveyed the results of his latest scheme and returned us to our respective cages. Only four survived from our original ten, and six more were added from varying groups.

"Why us?" Someone in the corner asked, a little blonde chick with curly locks. Her big blue eyes were glaring at the ground.

No one had an answer. No one ever would. They'd all be dead before they found out.


	5. Yeah Death Sucks

Authors note: You guys are getting two chapter! Yeah!

Now, it wasn't that I didn't want to post these chapters, (it isn't I swear) but more of a Starscream-became-pissed-and-locked-me-in-a-cage-with-little-to-no-contact-with-Chris-for-simply-disobeying-a-simple-command-and-now-he-feels-the-need-to-force-me-into-submission-y kind of thing. It really wasn't all that bad, kind of like being grounded. By an alien. A giant alien who cares more for your body than your mind. It doesn't matter though, because I'm posting now. I can't promise anything else. For now I can post these few chapters I have written in my spare time. Also, I can only hope Starscream gets off his high horse and is nicer to me now that I am a youngling. The name feels weird on my tongue. I feel like I went through a rite of passage to get to such a title.

**Chapter 5: Yeah Death Sucks**

So last chapter was depressing, I know. I lived it, and I warned you. There are no happy rainbows and butterflies in my story. If you want to drop it now- then do it, before I give you the more intimate details of everyone left. They need to be remembered too, just like me. But they are weak, not as strong… their memories aren't mine. I can only convey what I saw them go through. What we all went through.

It's frustrating that I can't just allude to what happened, like saying "needles"- they would all cringe. Their reactions varied from cringing to freaking out. Normal reactions that someone who'd been stuck with almost a hundred needles would feel. I'm almost positive that something is wrong with me when I think of needles. I don't freak out or cringe, anymore anyways- I stare and lose hope. I'm naturally quiet and I suffer the same way- as you probably noticed. I don't even want to guess why I thought it was a good idea to do that. I don't ladle my problems onto other people- I deal with them. Nobody is living my life, except me. No matter how many people were experimented on… I'm alone. Pretty sure I screwed myself up somehow…

I wish I could be sitting in my swirly-chair-thingy. Or making a grilled cheese sandwich with our old stove making its hissing noises. Or writing fanfiction that didn't pertain to my own suffering. I'm not- I'm thinking what I want to write and it's there. Stored in a separate part of my brain. Then, when it's time, it all comes out as if my mind is throwing up. Its simple but so inhuman, to me anyways. Other people might be sitting at the computer saying- I wish I could do that! No, you really don't. Once it's out of your head, it's gone. I won't remember this until I reread it and commit the words to my memory. I won't remember the whole reason behind its writing- now that's frustrating. It's like starting new everyday when I recall my memories. Sometimes the memories will come back, but it takes a lot of poking and prodding.

I'm getting off topic again. Ughh, I'll just update the rest of this. It's easier than actually trying to be personable. Not that I don't want to… it's just hard now.

I sat in the cage, leaning against the wall with Ben to my right and Sarah, the blonde with big eyes, to my left. We hadn't spoken in a long time. Any questions I needed to have answered couldn't be answered by them, and vice versa. When I looked around for the first time in a while I could tell we were now up to eight guys and two girls. Still ten in all. I wondered cynically if it just meant some of the cages were put away until they needed them again. Sometime, I wish I wasn't right about things. I wish a lot of things. Most of all, I wish I had never heard of transformers.

Starscream had left us in these cages for a good day with little food or water.

As we sat, we couldn't help but look at our new appendages. My arm responded right, and I could move it, but there was something that felt unnatural about it. I dragged the metal digits down my face and felt smooth surface contact smooth surface. It was like plastic being able to feel skin. So strange. I hadn't noticed it before but my bracelet was gone, replaced with numbers tattooed across my wrist. _1000HG… _Do you know how fucking twisted that is? I don't curse often, but I think I get a little lea-way. Waking up with an arm that isn't yours and a tattoo you don't know about and hate… I shivered when I realized the implications. I was now a **thing**. Owned. Bought with pain and torture, and sold with nothing more than a flick of my wrist.

I wouldn't be going back. My mind hadn't fully accepted the fact that this was my life. Until now, I'd been in limbo for almost a month- fighting for my rights to say, "Screw you and your plan Starscream." This was like Starscream saying, "No, _screw_ you." Maybe that was why he allowed me to write this. I have been calmer…

I've never hated anyone like I hate Starscream, but then again, I've never really appreciated anyone as much as Starscream when he gives me food, praises me, or even doesn't beat me. It's twisted, and I kick myself daily for having such conflicted emotions. All I want is to be normal, free, and a little teenagerish. I mean, is that really a lot to ask for? Why was it me? Was I sought out specifically because I was a Fanfiction Authoress? If so, could someone go back in time and burn any books I've ever touched that give me any inkling of inspiration? It was Eragon. Don't let my cousin give it to me- take it from her and burn it. Make me an idiot. I'd rather be blissfully unaware than so knowledgeable it hurt.

"Jessica…" I was literally pulled out of my self-loathing by Ben, who was looking at me, tired. His face was gaunt and he looked like the dead. On a good day. His leg had been giving him problems and he hadn't even tried moving it. On occasion his leg would shift and he would settle it back down. He couldn't move his appendage like everyone else could. It had a mind of its own at times.

"Yeah?" I asked curling and uncurling my fingers with distain, refusing to look him in the eyes. My hand obeyed effortlessly, and I wanted to scream at it. All I would see in Bens eyes was pity and understanding. I didn't want that. Ever. He didn't deserve to have me rely on him for any of that. Especially with his leg problems. No matter how much we stood up for each other, we were going to be alone in the end. We could only hope the end came fast and soon.

I understand why people put their animals out of their misery. It's because they don't want them to suffer. Starscream hasn't put us out of our misery, so he must want us to suffer. It sounds logical right? My brain has been doing more 'logic' calculations, now than ever before.

"Did you hear that?" He asked, tilting his head toward the door. My head literally snapped up to look at him and towards the direction he gestured. Noise? I hadn't heard it. My ears were now focused solely on the door. When one of us heard something, it usually meant something bad was going to happen. Then I heard it.

It sounded like someone had turned on a microwave and placed a stereo playing music inside it. It scratched and warbled its low tune. The harder I listened, the louder it became. It was quite mesmerizing. Like listening to a favorite band.

"What..?" I voiced my thoughts, uncurling myself to stretch my head to a better listening position. My new limb twitched with some sort of energy I'd never felt before. Adrenalin rushed my systems and I felt anticipation rise. For absolutely no reason. It was only a noise and I couldn't help but wonder why it was affecting me in such a way. Starscream didn't even get this kind of response out of me.

You'll never guess what happened next. I wouldn't have. It didn't make any sense-

-I passed out. Fainted. Somehow the noise rose in volume and I just faded.

I wish I could say I knew when I woke up, but I couldn't. Time was meaningless in the dark that surrounded me. I could see nothing as I opened my eyes and lay staring up into blackness. Hours, minutes… Fear gripped my spirit and for a moment- I wondered if I was dead. Then, I tried moving my arms and knew I wasn't. Both arms were strapped down and so was every other moveable appendage.

If I was dead, I wouldn't be strapped down to something hard and cold. If I was dead, I wouldn't be feeling fear or pain in my non-metal limb. If I was dead, I wouldn't be thinking of Starscream and what would be coming next. If I was dead, all would be good. But I wasn't.

That's all I could think, as I lay in agonizing wait over something I had no control over. No big surprise there. I haven't had control over my life since I ate a bit of dry bread… this morning. I think it was this morning, but I am unsure. It could have been hours ago. It could be night. I wouldn't know. We'd been underground and hidden for such a long time. I wasn't starved, but my stomach was almost in an indeterminate state between chewing its self to bits and being satisfied. I always wanted food, but I pushed it to the back of my mind as I thought back to my problems. It never helped to dwell, but I don't think there was much else I could do. Dwelling on food or pain: the choice. Sometimes, it was a hard alternative and I picked wrong often enough.

I heard it before I felt it, but it was really an unspeakable feeling. Like someone massaging my head with a hammer and running over my nerves with an RV. I gasped and contorted as best I could, with my arms and legs strapped to the hard surface, some kind of synthetic leather bit into my appendages. My imitation arm didn't move when I asked it to, and I panicked a tiny bit. I tried to get away from the sensation that was both painful yet pleasurable. It was the kind of pain that wasn't all that bad. I could only ride the waves of agonized bliss that coursed through my system. I've never felt anything like it to date. One of these days, I might be able to figure out the feelings… but not now.

Time became more meaningless than ever as I sat in the torture.

Then, it faded. It didn't disappear, not totally, anyways. It was there in the back of my mind, but it was as if it didn't matter. Like everything had expanded. Like I was learning. I could think clearly then, formulas to stop my suffering ran through my head. Not mathematically, but structurally- strategically. I almost felt like smacking myself in the head. Play dead.

I had just enough self control to stop myself and lay on the warmed metal underneath me. Totally and irrevocably immobile. You all know how hard the statue game is; well I kept it up for a while. I think it was an hour before I got as much as a difference of air temperature. First thought in my mind when the light came to greet me? I feel like a vampire from twilight. Honest to god, first thought. It made me chuckle darkly.

The light didn't hurt like I thought it would, it was more like dark than- 'what'd ya know? Light!' The change was as fast as someone snapping their fingers. It wasn't at all unpleasant. Go figure. After pain after pain, it wasn't easy to trust what was going on. It felt like I was being lulled into a sense of calm, then someone would jump out and I would be thrown back into a world of pain. No one jumped out and yelled 'boo.' Nobody stopped the light. Nobody stopped my mind from feeling even a smidgeon of hope. Nobody was to blame but myself.

Well, until Starscream showed his face, that is. My heart pummeled downwards, but the temperature in the room rose. It shot up almost four degrees as he stepped into the light, blocking my vision. I shook myself as he silently signaled the chair to let me go. I don't know how it works, but it immediately snapped open and I tumbled off the chair. I had already been in mid-convulsion, and now I was laying stunned on the ground. My arm was responding again, and I had used a little too much force. It stung a little.

"Diagnostic?" Starscreams voice commanded, in more of a demand than a question. I was confused and looked up to find his faceplate no more than two feet away. My arm thrummed and I couldn't really see all too clearly yet. I was dizzy and stumbling, so when he showed up he practically gave me a heart attack- then I yelped and fell back on my butt, again. My mind was mush for half a second before I cowered. I had actually made a sound in Starscreams presence. That never went over well before, so I didn't know why it would start now.

"Diagnostic?" He repeated once more, clearly becoming tired of my inability to straighten my thoughts. He was already scanning me and I could feel the red laser flash into my eyes. I blinked and rubbed them, trying to get rid of the little white dots left behind. He was scanning me, and yet he wanted me to tell him what was wrong. I heard a huff just above my disoriented form.

"I will not repeat myself."

I stiffened immediately and look up into Starscreams optics. He was now royally pissed, and if I didn't appease him soon…. I didn't want to think of that. So I thought about what the heck diagnostic meant. I could only think of reporting my injuries.

"I'm not hurt," I said, clearly lying through my teeth as my arm throbbed steadily from where I had fallen. "I have a little bit of a head-ache. Uh- I-I don't think anything is wrong with me." That last part may have been a little much, but it helped me seem normal. Human. Begging. Normal humans did that, right? I wasn't sure, all I'd ever written about was abnormal humans, and it didn't seem fair that I would fall into my own category.

Starscream watched me carefully for a moment, and then stuck out his hand, expectantly. I didn't have the strength to feel angry, so I just got up and walked. It was a short distance, but my arm was killing me- like it was waking up from being numb. It was metal, but it was prickling like it had been asleep for a long time. I traced a skinny, malnourished finger over the back of my palm, and felt the oddest sensation. It was on par with what my real hand was feeling, maybe even better. Every movement registered, and I couldn't help but continue to feel from my limb that had once been numb. It was a shock. Nothing had really gotten to me as much as this.

That was the moment; I knew we were going to be invaluable.

I looked up to see Starscream impatient, and didn't want to chance any knowledge I had. I scrambled on as best I could, feeling pangs and tingles from my arm. I decided to restart the habit of naming things. Pain and Punishment had evolved into a new kind of thing- and I could only think of one word for it: Alien. I thought it was fitting. Alien beings had kidnapped me, and fitted their own technology to my arm. But for what?

I hadn't noticed Starscream moving until he was out of the dark and the light came to greet me, like an over excited puppy dog. I squinted and rubbed my eyes. Apparently, whatever had happened in the dark wasn't going to happen again. Maybe my mind had just stumbled stupidly over itself. I looked up to see Starscream studying me. It was the thoughtful look he wore, that worried me most. When He thinks, people die. I shivered at the implications of my own meanings. Then, I felt delighted that I could actually feel somewhat human when I thought of god-awful things not connected to me. My emotions skipped back and forth: Disgust, plotting, anger, and what not, all stringing along to make an emotion train-wreck.

I was so out of it that I didn't realize until I was in the cage- carefully dropped- that Starscream was being gentle. Like I was a newborn and important. I snapped my head to look at him, but he was already walking away. I wanted to ask so many questions. My inquisitional mind couldn't handle the strain of the unknown.

"Jessica?"I froze out of whatever self-loathing I had decided to bestow on myself, and heard the voice clearly. I nearly cried in relief on the spot as I spun to see Chris, sitting pretty. Well, as pretty as one with a bionical leg could. He looked gaunt and malnourished, but it was one of the happiest sights I'd seen in a while. Until I looked around to find Ben. He wasn't back from our latest torture session. I know it was the mild one for me, but I wasn't sure what the effects it would have on the others. Sarah was staring out into nothing with her big eyes. I wondered briefly if they fried her brain, because I had only seen that look on the mentally unstable at our school. I had to look away, because I was sure she was going to be one of the next gone. Chris's eyes met mine, and I smiled that little smile you get when you're hopeful. You can't squelch the smile under a boot- it just comes out, like throw up.

"Chris." I breathed, feeling the human name on my tongue and loving it. I staggered over to his side of the cage and plopped down next to him, unceremoniously. He had on a wide grin and I couldn't help but returning it, then I reached forward and hugged him tight. It wasn't a small hug either, if I would have been in my right mind I would have called it down right desperate. It was a moment later that I tried to figure out the sound of choking and sobbing- it wasn't a moment later that I realized it was me. I sniffled and buried my head into the crook of his neck. It was a mixture of everything that had me crying- not just Ben's absence or Sarah's unseeing eyes. Everything. Missing my family, feeling my arm, taking for granted my life and most of all not being able to see the world. He mirrored my position, and soon we were both letting tears soak into the very fabric on our shoulders.

"It's good to see you." He said, weakly and I returned it with. "You too."

I got my first look at his bionic limb, and was surprised it looked well shined and almost alive, like the transformers metal. Well, shit. Pardon my French. I thought, looking down at my own arm. This was not a good day for me, cussing and what-not, but I knew what was going on now. As I looked into Chris's eyes, I realized he did too. This was their plan all along. Nobody else was in the cage with us, only me and Chris with Sarah staring blankly at a wall. As the room got colder she didn't even try to keep herself warm.

Chris and I talked until I felt like my throat should be bleeding. He talked about his struggles in the other cage, how he had been moved into one with Ryan. Juliet had died with the second test, and Ryan had followed close behind. He didn't know what he died of, but he guessed it was a broken heart. I felt for them, but I knew from the beginning something was going to end this way. If not me and Chris than Chris or Ben, or some combination of people who I was close with. I only hoped that nothing else happened to take them away.

I told him about Ben, and Sarah, and the nameless people who all walked off the edge of the table. He told a similar story, only not as many people walked. We sat and shared for hours, before Starscream brought in one final person. He saw our looks, and set him down in the middle. My heart dropped as I realized it wasn't Ben, but one of the other guys who needed a good shaving.

"You are not the only ones." Starscream said, before he left. I wasn't sure if it was said to encourage us or dishearten us. Because it did both. He was giving us hope with simultaneously crushing it. The man in the middle looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. His arm was also bionical, and I almost said something to the effect of 'we're twins'. But I didn't I could tell it was a painful subject for any of us. I couldn't handle any more thinking, so I cuddle with Chris for warmth.

"Tell me a story." I begged, watching the lights dim considerably. I could feel him stiffen, but then he relaxed- thinking. "It's got to be real, no fake crap about ponies that fart rainbows and princesses who find princes. Honor something- not just desires." I said, holding myself as though to keep the demons in my own heart at bay. Chris pondered this request for a while. I could see the man and Sarah both coming closer- to listen to this small token of human light.

"It was a cold dreary November night, and all was silent in the town of Whispers. People had been working hard all day and now that they had gotten a moments rest- they snatched it up like it was gold. But while everyone slept a thief stole into people's homes- quick and silent."

"Nobody could see in the morning that, what was missing, would become important for the winter to come. And every night after the laborers went to bed, one more of the thing disappeared. It was almost December when someone finally noticed a trend. 'Why! I don't believe my eyes, someone's been taking our children.'

"The village was stirring and everyone found it true, almost every household was lacking a child or two or three. How nobody noticed, nobody knew, but it was clear someone had something to do. They set up a watch, kept their precious babies in their arms and went to bed scared of the thought of what might happen.

" Then, that night the thief did return and was captured and found guilty of all of his crimes. He was young, no more than twenty but had the craziest gleam in his eyes. They questioned him where the babies had gone, he told them he sold them. Everyone was in such an uproar that they killed him on the spot."

I shivered as he continued his tale, weaving and plotting a story of our very own life. Personified in story they would remain, until somebody found the children.

"Everyone tried to find the people who would buy children, but nobody could tell. Everyone was trustworthy and everyone had children. Nobody knew who it could be, so years pasted and the children grew older, until finally it happened again in October. The grandparents were a mess, but this time they knew. They had to keep the thief alive this time, so they could make him pay."

He weaved such a saga, I shivered at every part. I couldn't believe such a simple request could spark this.

"The thief was caught, one of their own. He told them a yarn about big bears- who would trade him a box of good hunting supplies, or whatever his heart desired at that moment, for every child he decided to bring to their table. They ate everyone and the man got his money, and soon enough everyone went in search of the bears. To kill them, to punish, maybe even to buy their children back- but nobody could find them. They'd disappeared without a trace.

"This myth of the bears, it was passed on forever. Until finally, someone found the bears. They were not really bears, but more of men with fur. They were the children grown up- taught to buy children and either eat them, sacrifice them, or teach them their trade. Nobody knew it. Nobody had a clue. That's why everyone is so protective of their children, because the bear people will snatch them away."

We'd sat enthralled as he spun us the tale, and now I wondered if he meant that story to represent us. Was that what the bots were doing? I looked at my arm and got my answer. Yes. I wasn't sure why, or even how, but I knew someone if anyone could do it- it was Starscream. I shivered as we all sat huddled together. Nobody wanted to be cold this night, and as Chris and I struggled for warmth so did Sarah and the man. The knock-out spray began and I started feeling drowsy.

"Thank you." I garbled, as we both tumbled into the darkness known as unconsciousness.


	6. The Vat and That's That

"_Thank you." I garbled, as we both tumbled into the darkness known as unconsciousness._

I don't know the time it happened, just that it did. It might have been before the testing if it hadn't been for the lack of people in the cage. I had started marking time by when people disappeared- sometimes by events, too. One day, or hour, or minute I was sitting in my cage struggling with Chris to find warmth in such a cold landscape. We'd been cold for so long that feeling warmth was a God-send. My teeth chattered as I felt in my arm something stirring. My metal would sometimes itch when Starscream was around, or maybe tingle when something was being planned by him. Sometimes I never knew, and I never cared- until it was upon us.

As I said, we were sitting there trying to stay alive against all efforts contrary to us. Another round of shots had been administered to my already bruising arm and I just wanted a moments peace and quiet. Starscream ruined that by stomping through the lab with another cage in hand. He was grumpy, ill-tempered and looked like he wanted to kill somebody. I can't be sure he didn't, that day. There were eight people at most in the cage when he set it down, and they all looked worse for wear than we all did. Instinctively I shied away, feeling death and sickness just by looking at them. My own poor immune system was gagging at the thought of sharing air with them.

"Twelve." Starscream growled to the air, crashing through his lab as though preparing our demise. Chris and I both shared a brief look and then huddled in the farthest side of the cage- away from his wrath. I wasn't even going to try and replicate my first day. Too many painful memories. Sarah and Dominique, the guy, were sitting in the corner already close together and ducking their heads. We joined in, trying to ignore Starscreams rant, but failing miserably. It was alright though, most of it was in their bizarre language that sounded of clicks and chirps.

"Only twelve, at this -_crack-_," He seethed. "Might as well _–chichi-_ now!" Every other syllable from then on was static and angry, though not as angry as the human words thrown in. When Transformers were angry, it was scary. They were controlled- emotions in check as they sought out a plan to totally decimate their problems. The reaction followed a pretty strict protocol: Seethe, kill or maim, and at times gloat and brag over the fallen's body. Starscream was at the seething stage- but I could tell he was going to be killing and maiming someone soon.

One of the other Transformers tried to calm him down. I hadn't known he was even there until I heard his soft voice- speaking words I couldn't understand. He wasn't making any sense, so I could only try and glean from body expression what was going to happen. Starscream was about ready to attack when a noise stopped him. It came from the cage to my left- and I could only watch in horror as one of the girls in the cage fell over, writhing on the ground. It wasn't a moment later that she stopped moving, and all the other teens in the cell backed away from the corpse.

"Eleven." Starscream growled, annoyance lacing his tone. He turned to the other transformer, who- by now- was starting to look like every other Transformer I'd seen. Barking orders left and right, Starscream left with the other. Then it was quiet, and I could hear the sound of harsh breathing of the sick in the next cage, and feel the soft fabric of Chris's shirt. With a shiver and a sigh, I leaned back against the cage- trying in vain to figure out what was going on. Starscream was upset about numbers making my head hurt to even think about it. Then, the number went down and he seemed to be more distraught.

Then it clicked. Eight and four, together it was twelve. I counted everyone in the cages- including dead girl. I never did figure out her name, but she deserved to be remembered for surviving this long. There were twelve of us. We were all that was left. Chris had figured that out also, but we didn't talk about it. Taboo. So many things were taboo in our small little cage. It wasn't hard to add a new object of interest to their ever growing list. Now the subject of number was sacred, practically.

"That could have gone better."

I looked over to see Sarah rubbing her arms to get warm, and Dominique looking distraught over something. His bionical arm was moving slowly- stopping at some points and freezing at others. Every time it did, he flinched. I couldn't be sure, because we didn't talk about it, but I was pretty sure the arm was rejecting him.

It was some kind of medical mumbo-jumbo, but I was sure that was the reason. I'd heard of transplanted organs rejected by their host and in return the person dying. I think he knew, too. He tried to spend as much time as he could comforting and being with Sarah- almost like he knew something was going to happen. Then again, of course something was going to happen. It always did. We just didn't know what, until he happened.

"I'm sorry." I mumbled out of the blue, looking around the cage and even towards the other one housing our sibling prisoners. We were all alone in this big room, filled to the brim with all things alien. It made me sad, but I couldn't do anything about it. This sadness was crushing, like a giant weight. It didn't matter how I felt though, because we were all going to die. That's what I thought anyways.

"'s'not your fault," I heard Dominique mutter. His breath was heated and it sounded like it was pained. I looked up to see him clutching his arm and smiling wryly at me. I never noticed that his eyes were green, but now that I did it was remorsefully so. I could tell for sure now. He was dying- being rejected wasn't good for his body and it was the only way he'd make it out of here.

"Never any of ya'all's faults," He was whispering it in small gasp, with his metal hand hanging limp- showing no signs of life unlike my own was. I smiled sadly at him, and got up from Chris's outreached hand. Dominique could only grin morosely as I sat down next to him. He was too weak to do anything but lift his head. I'd never noticed that he was slowly shutting down, but I felt like he needed me in his final moments- which lasted no more than a minute.

He collapsed in my lap, head on my thighs. I could have pushed him off- should have. I didn't. He gasped as his real hand grabbed his shiny arm. The metal was spazzing as he clutched, desperately trying to keep it from hurting. No luck with that. He groaned and moaned, blood falling from his chaffed skin. I just sat there, too. I stroked his hair at one point, it was grimy and sweaty. The time it took from him to finally shut down was long, and my legs were hurting from where he'd tried to arch out of deaths grasps with nothing but his head. I was numb when he passed and just continued to sit there. I felt like everything was spiraling down a spinning toilet's water.

"Jessica…"I heard from somewhere to the right. I might have been sitting there for a minute or even an hour, but I'd never been disturbed until I saw Sarah and Chris both looking at us sadly. Understanding. There. They were blurred and for a moment I was sure I was losing my eyesight. But I wasn't. It was something just slightly worse than that. Tears streamed down my nose and dropped off the tip. I was crying and when I looked down I saw a small puddle forming on Dominique's face. With shaking hands I wiped them away, staring at them almost like I held his blood on my hands. Nobody else was crying, not even Sarah who had spent most of her time with him. Her lifeless eyes looked oddly disconnected. Maybe she was numb like me. I wasn't sure. She could just be blind.

"I wanna go home." I sniffed, carefully putting Dominique's head on the ground as I let the tears fall. He wasn't even going to get a proper burial. Death had taken him from a place so much like hell- I wondered briefly if he'd been a Christian. I was only slightly conscious of Chris leading me back to the far corner. Then, I curled up with him as he let me cry on his shoulder.

It wasn't even just about Dominique's silently painful death. It was everything. I was finally just breaking down. It had gotten to me. I was now in pain. Real, unadulterated searing pain. It started in my chest and gave me a headache. I'd been numb and silent through all the torture, and now it just burst out like a damn inside of me broke open. My family wasn't with me. Ryan, Juliet, Ben, and Dominique were dead within so much time of each other. Hundreds of others before and after them. Chris and Sarah were the only ones who mattered. Strangers were my family. I'd been living a lie. It was a combination mash of all of it that made me break down and sob into Chris's shirt.

I didn't love him, I wasn't sure if I ever would. I wished I could love him. He represented everything good in the moments we could live. I liked him. He was my best friend at the moment, but as a child and a teenager I knew such things didn't last. Transformers- who knows how old- held us against our will, mutilating our bodies, marking us for themselves. We'd never be able to escape this. A sob caught in my throat as I clenched my teeth from the phantom pain. These times would be hard enough without such harsh and unrelenting emotions such as love.

I don't know how long I cried, but when I finally looked up and around, sniffling back my tears, I found Chris sleeping with Sarah curled up next to him. He wasn't sleeping though, I hadn't noticed his eyes open as he looked at me. A little of the old Chris from before sparkling through.

"Better?" He asked, shifting into a more comfortable position. I creaked my head into nodding. I felt the slightest bit better, but also bitter. I knew this should be the last time I cried, I just didn't think about it so literally. For a Fanfiction authoress, I was an idiot to the plots that follow every day, war life.

Starscream came in at that moment, followed closely behind by another bot. The same expressionless bot that had taken me the first time. My arm twitched excitedly, being called by it's brother metal in the beings. Starscream glared at us pointedly, but he looked happier. Less maniac-ish. A smirk set itself upon his face. A façade not easily broken apparently. Sarah was awake now, staring at Starscream with no emotion. She and I both curled a little farther near Chris, not trusting Starscreams rapid transformation.

As we shivered under their gaze they talked briefly. It was no more than a long snippet of their language, drawn out so we couldn't even dream to understand. Then, Starscream grabbed our cage in both hands, with the finesse of a tiger about to kill a lamb. We jumbled around as he walked, clearly he didn't care if we bruised. Sarah tumbled on top of me as I slammed into Chris, knocking the wind out of him. It was understandable why Starscream was angry. He'd lost almost a thousand of his experiments, and now he was almost to the very last stage. Maybe he thought more people would survive. I don't have a clue. It's all past now.

We were carried through many doors, changing rapidly from light to dark, it hurt my eyes so much I just shut them for the duration of the trip. It wasn't a long one either. I can't quite recall the scenery, but it was mostly grays and blacks, or very bright yellows and whites. We were lead into a room that was dark, and it gave off a warm feeling. I opened my eyes only when the cage touched solid ground. They sprang open as I looked around in awe. My eyes were still puffy and sore from crying, but they beheld the sight in from of me well.

It was a room, filled with only tubes of blue liquid. Each was half the size of a transformer, and spaced equally a ways apart. I think they might have been ten meters apart, each, but I wasn't sure. Transformers could walk comfortably down the alleys and aisles, not one of the tubes was an inch out of line. The part that frightened and made me shiver was the fact that they were all empty. Every single last one of them. There had to be at least a hundred, but I couldn't tell as they went on and on for almost a league.

I guess it was stupid of me not to notice, but Starscream was now over in the corner of the room. Pressing button after button and pushing lever after lever down. If I didn't know any better I would have said he was typing. I heard a hiss and looked over to see the tubes of liquid opening their giant metal mouths. It sounded like something from a Syfi movie, and frightened me enough that I pushed into the corner even harder. I wasn't an idiot and could guess what this all meant. I'd been watching the containers too closely. I didn't even hear when Starscream came over and then finally picked me up. The hissing of opening valves only stopped when Starscream stopped his movements. Then, he stared at the screen in front of himself with the upmost concentration.

The next second of my life was the longest since I'd been beaten within an inch of my life. When Starscream turned around, he smiled. It wasn't his usual I'm-better-than-thou, but more like I-finally-did-it. I shivered, because he'd never shown me such an expression before. It was traced with such wonton pleasure that I was scarcely able to look away for fear it was because he was finally going to kill me. In a sense, he was- but that is for later. Not much later, but enough that I would ruin my trail of thought.

Starscream nodded his head to the other bot who gladly picked two people out of the cage next to us. Nobody screamed, we just watched. It was a boy and a girl, leaving three girls and two boys behind. Everyone shuffled as far away from the bot as we could, knowing without a fraction of a doubt it wouldn't help. People had walked off edges and destroyed their own sanity. They would not be able to get their fellow humans back by a simple temper tantrum. Sarah shivered next to me, and Chris pressed closer as we watched the inevitability of everything happen.

The two people picked up were still and silent as the bot walked over to the vats of blue, and then was as much care as throwing a pebble in a lake he dropped them. A foot away, but still a good distance. The two who dropped were now struggling to the surface, trying in vain to get back to air. They were almost at the top of the liquid, when something inside the container moved. It was swift, and shone even under the water. Shark like was how I would describe how it ripped up towards the bodies and yanked them down to the very middle of the tube. Then, othes joined. One, then two, and finally sixteen- all holding the one being down. A girl. A boy. I wasn't sure what happened inside of it, but the people soon stopped struggling and hung limply as the long snakelike arms of metal did their work.

All the while, the bot had made a second trip to the cage, picking up two more. They struggled only slightly more than the others had to get to the surface, and then it happened again. Arms came and grabbed them and that was that. It happened two more times, once grabbing Sarah, and the final time- he took Chris.

I can't even say I was brave enough to hold onto him. When the hand fell into the cage, we all instinctively shied away from each other. Not far. Not enough. Never enough. As he was being lifted, Chris gave me a smirk. Waving almost heartily as he was dragged to the tube next to a boy who was wrapped with vine after vine of appendages. That's what they were. Appendages to whatever monster lived in the tubes. I felt sickness rise in my throat from it all.

The world slowed as I watched Chris being dropped. I felt like I was watching a play-back of football, someone being tackled and the whole thing stopping mid-motion. He hit the water, and then went under. I waited a moment, then another. He hadn't surfaced like everyone else had. Five seconds, and then he was caught in the clear blue liquid by long snake like things, grabbing and pulling him to the very middle. No motion from him. Not one. If I wasn't mistaken, the vines were also a small bit more gentle and slow with Chris than anyone else. Maybe, it had been my imagination. It could have been- I hadn't even seen the other person dropped. Or even if there had been one.

My vision had narrowed to one thing, like usual. Maybe the other person had been Sarah. I don't know. I was the last. With a sigh, I accepted my fate and rose to my feet as the Decepticon came back to receive me. My legs were numb, and I couldn't feel my face from all the tears but I stood somewhat proudly. Even when he grabbed me roughly around the middle, I didn't flinch. I was finally at the point where all that was left was acceptance. No bargaining. No second chances. Just living the last few moments of my life- accepting them for what they were. My last moments as I would know them.

When I reached the water, I couldn't help but marvel at how nice and cool it looked. It smelled fresh, too. I remember I thought about what it would feel like to drown. Would it hurt? I shook as I was dropped suddenly. Unceremoniously. That was how I plopped into the water. Like Chris though, I didn't go back to the surface. I'd seen all I had wanted, and now this was what was left.

It was sooner than I had expected, but only a few moments later something grabbed my leg and yanked. I gave no resistance. I didn't even think about it- actually. I just breathed in- wondering why they wanted me as a dead human forever encased in sweetly smelling liquid.

Then I did what humans (or me) did best. I blacked out.

* * *

I updated. This is pretty incredible for me. So... Hope you enjoyed. I always love to read reviews I don't know any sane or crazy person who doesn't... So, drop me one?

Though, **Kellie WitWicky**, I do have to say, if this applied to Government- then it would probably be a problem. It's just Decepticons, so no big loss. -Shrugging- I mean, I like to "LOL" at people being shoved in cages, too. Good past time. Also, Read between the lines- Sarcasm is sometimes better than duck tape.

Also, thank you **Elemental Queen**. He was being sweet at that time. I just wish I could have kept him like that forever.


	7. Is this reality, or is this fantasy?

So, Thank you for the reviews. Yes, Starscream is brutal. He has not changed at all. Well, I mean in my mind he has, but he is a very old being and will not easily succumb to any kind of change. Be it good or bad. He's killed a lot of bots, and he's not going to stop just because it upsets the human. Or rather his human.

This is the chapter where I wake up and find out that everything is not what I was ever going to dream it to be.

So-

Is this reality, or is this fantasy?

* * *

I'd like to say when I woke up I felt fine. Or at least normal. But that wasn't so. I felt, for lack of a better word, like shit. Crummy, and hazy. I should have been tied up, and soaking, but I wasn't even the slightest bit wet or held down. This was strange, considering when I fell unconscious that I had been dumped in a towering container of attractive liquid and had been dragged to the middle by tentacle like arms. I should be wet. Why wasn't I? My head felt like what I would assume someone with a hangover would feel. I don't know, I'll never have one. It pounded, and something smelled faintly of citrus. Or what I assumed was citrus; it was more of a heavy smell than soft and acidy. I groaned and rubbed my face with my metal hand, flinching as my hand came into contact with a rough and edged material. My finger was satin against the metal. It kind of felt like a baseball helmet, but seriously messed up with a baseball bat. Raggedy. _Maybe they were trying mind control now? _I snorted in laughter, but it sounded off, even to my foggy mind.

I should be freaking out, but I'm not.

Make no mistake, when I wake up from a nice comfortable sleep into a world of discomfort and pain- I may be a_ little_ disoriented. Maybe a whole lot disoriented. Maybe so much disorientation that I can't even think straight. I don't have any reservations that I could say the same about you. It may seem a little weird that I didn't pick up on my situation very fast. When you wake up in the same settings as me **then** you can call me and complain, but this is how I remember my waking into my new world.

Everything was sluggish, and I felt like I was still deep under water. Everything was different. My thought process was something akin to grated cheese trying to return back to being whole. I'd wonder why the ceiling above me was gray one second and then jump to look at my metal arm. Then, I would wonder briefly why it was the wrong arm. The next second would be staring at the very tip of my nose. It was a different shape. I was sure of that fact. I would go cross-eyed and get a head-ache for a split second before going onto another random thought.

How did birds keep in the air? What would happen if I divided by Zero? At times, while I lay blankly staring I would just go void and feel uncomfortable. Empty at times. Maybe I was on pain killers? It would make sense. I knew I should be feeling immense pain, but it had been dulled from the beginning.

Maybe they were trying to make me addicted to drugs….

My concept of time was skewed to hell and back. I might have had the mindset of a two year-old for an hour, or even a day. I'm not sure. But things started going back to reality soon enough, and I was able to count the tiles on the ceiling. They were huge and looming. There were fourteen that I could see, and then walls came up out of nowhere and cut off the rest of the gray sky from my vision. After a while, I could move my head and see that I was trapped in what seemed to be a giant box. It was looming. There was no door, and it was missing its top. I felt like a puppy or kitten for sale, being put in a card-board box for people to look at. As far as I could tell, though, nobody had peeked in to so much as check on me. I groaned again as my mind turned to mush for a brief second.

My next big development was sitting up, after I stopped thinking of everything I could. It was tricky business, and I felt as though someone was stabbing me repeatedly with needles in my abdomen. Tingling and I had to moan at the feeling. My eyes were closed for most of the action of rising but when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw were my feet. I didn't even try and hold my position as I fell onto the table again, staring up into the air in shock. My legs… They were messed up. It's hard to describe my initial reaction of disbelief and surprise. Imagine if one day, you look and your left hand is gone. Just missing. Not a whole lot of pain to associate with the limb that was gone, only emptiness. That's how I was feeling, except my leg was there. Both of them. They were just so contradictory. Different in the way I could handle, but so strange that I wanted to fall asleep and never get back up. My memory was gone from anything associate with my limbs. My legs reminded me of the hind-legs of a dog -hocks maybe? - bent weird and paws clawed. So _very _sharply clawed paws. At least my body responded when I shook in incredulity.

Then, as if believing my other appendages wouldn't share the same fate I lifted both my arms out in front of me. Perfectly mirror images of each other. I felt like I was looking at a weapon, and wanted to drop it. I couldn't though, because they were attached to me. Literally. Layer upon layer of metal built up the outside of my arm, and covered in such a way that I felt like I was wearing armor. Like it was removable. Then the claws. I wanted to purge my stomach at the thought of what the Decepticons used them for. _Decepticons? Crap! _I'd forgotten about Starscream.

_Why would he leave me alone?_ I wondered as I looked around, then stupidly, it dawned on me. _Oh, yeah. I'm in a box. I can't escape. _

I didn't have the strength, at that moment to look at the rest of my body. I knew without a doubt that I would find it spoiled, like my limbs. It took all I had not to just break down and give up. Then I breathed deeply, thinking to calm my racing heartbeat, which I knew would be pounding-

-Nothing-

-My breath caught in my throat as I realized there was no movement. I couldn't feel a single pulse from anywhere in my body. Instead it was warm.

So warm.

Right above my chest was where I put my hand, and it heated with a pleasantness I didn't think was possible. Even though my anxiety rose, I couldn't feel anything of my heart. I shot into a sitting position, patting my body down, and finally getting a look at what had happened to me. It was an unsettling sight. My body was covered with pieces of metal, and they were all layered over each other. Criss-crossed. I didn't feel human. Nothing on me looked human. Except for sparse spots of hydraulics, and tubes; my body was completely not my own. My stomach was taunt, and ridged as I ran my claws over it. _Schhhhkkkllkur. _My ears rang with the sound of metal meeting sharpened steel. I wasn't sure if it was steel, most likely not- it was too strong to be an earth metal. I looked over my body a little more carefully after that.

On my right arm was my tattoo of ownership. It shone brightly illuminated against all the metal. _1000HG_. No organic thing was left in this small box. Memories of a time, that was all. I was some bionical thing… I wasn't even sure if I had any organs left. The only macrobiotic thing I could think of would be my thoughts. He couldn't take that away? Could he? He wouldn't take away my last human thing… would he? I shook my thoughts away as I tried to stand.

I was moving much better as I tried to stumble onto my new legs. No new tingles. It was quite useless trying to stand on my legs like a dog trying to reach a morsel on the Thanksgiving-table. They were unsteady and I soon felt my behind reach the ground before I could hardly catch myself.

"Ohff!" I huffed as I landed much harder than I thought possible. My metal plating stung and I fisted my hand to keep from crying out in pain. Much like a puppy would in surprise. Then I muttered a curse, intending for only myself to hear it. I'm pretty sure no one else would have been able to make it out. It came out in a garble of clicks and grinds. My hands that had been holding me up were instantly up at my throat and I fell back with a clank. My gullet burned with the use of new equipment. I would say it was like muscles that hadn't moved in years, and now were just getting exercise. I hissed as my claws clutched my throat. It felt like it was a tube- much stronger than my claws would be able to scratch by simply holding.

Click-Click-Grind-Click

I forget what I had been trying to say. It was more like an emotional cry.

**Despair-Confusion-Aid.** It was more like a cry for help than anything else. I wasn't in physical pain, but mentally I was a mess. My throat hick-up'ed as I tried to say something, but it only came out as the sounds of clicking and growls**. **

**Confusion-Aid-Insistent**. The most I could translate myself into was: Help. I should have been crying and tears should have been staining my face, but I felt no wetness. For some reason, I couldn't form any words of English. It was impressions of meanings. No matter how much I scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my palm, nothing happened. They felt strange- no eyelid, nothing remotely soft about it.

"Would you look at that? She survived." I heard a distinctly familiar voice snort above me. It seemed incredulous, but also so, so very proud. I looked up to see Starscream, still as towering as ever. He looked the same, nothing had changed for him, but from my eyes he'd become different. His colors were brighter and his angles softer, if that was possible. His intimidation factor had decreased ten-fold. I felt like he was a parent and I was mad at him for little reason. Like he should be scolding me. He reached down with a careless air and plucked me from the ground by my back. There must have been something to hold onto because I felt the tug as I was yanked into the air. With a startled click, I was in his other hand the next second. It was surprisingly warm. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but I didn't think it possible to feel heat in this form. I was warm already, wasn't I? I shook as he brought me to eye level. I sat and shivered as he looked me over.

His red eyes had been starring in most of my nightmares, and now were glancing me over like one would a prized possession, or a harmed child. I clicked at him angrily.

**Anger-Confusion-Questioning. **

He smiled cruelly at me before petting my head with one of his middle digits. It wasn't clawed, not like mine own paw. I almost growled at him for it, but stopped because it felt nice. One of the very few moments of comfortability I had felt… in a long time. Not like his metal against my skin used to feel. Harsh, irregular. We were built of the same material now, and it felt nice to feel the tenderness of his finger against my skull. I can't explain the softness that he patted my head with. It was a soft gesture, and I felt an emotional response unlike one I've ever felt before. Like I was actually worth something to him. Not just a drone that he could and **would** command. It was possessive, as he patted my head, but nothing near as hurtful as his hand used to feel.

"Now, shush. You are fine." He commanded me, and I mewled questioningly at him. Mewled. It was the harshest sound my throat would make at him, and I didn't understand it. Then his finger left, and my cranium felt oddly bare. Cold. His top lip curved into a smile as he cupped his other hand around my backside. It might have been so I didn't fall. I might never know, because then he started to speak to me.

He cleared his voice as if about to give a long winding speech he had given many times before. Which he probably had.

"You have survived, against all odds. A true Cybertronian, if anything. You are Decepticon property, now. You must become used to this fact." He touched my chest softly, pointing to a little emblem I hadn't noticed. Looking down my eyes opened wide in shock. It was purple, and depicted a face of harsh triangles. The Decepticon insignia. It was half shock and half relief that the shows and movie had been real in some respects. I shivered as I traced it lightly with my pointer claw. It looked so natural on my new body that I didn't even question it, just sigh and grind-click'ed at Starscream.

**Confusion-pain-**_**Why**_

_Damn it all. What was with the random clicking and grinding? I understand… but, it's not the same as my language. _This whole situation hadn't made a drop of sense to me. So yeah, I understood what was going on. I still didn't know **why **it was going on.

"You humans have a movie -no doubt endorsed by the Autobots- about the AllSpark being destroyed," His eyes flashed dangerously when he even so much as mentioned his enemy. I wanted to say something, but I knew if I did he would be angry with me. I didn't want that. Not yet. I was still just appreciating that he wasn't beating me, or brain washing me. "It is true. Hollywood has skewed the story, but its basis is not false."

I cocked my head and listened as he continued. This made sense. The AllSpark was gone- so what? What did that have to do with me? I interrupted him.

Click-Grind-Click

**Me-Why**

"We have chosen a number of humans to give our shape too- you- because our numbers have fallen too low. Our race is trapped with only a few options presented to us. Even the Autbots are feeling the strain of war. They are too spineless to enact a plan to save themselves, though. Too many have died to simply walk away now. Stupid on their part-"

Grind-Growl-Click

**Us-Why- How**

I knew interrupting him was like asking to be beat, but I could not help myself. I felt childish, and just the slightest bit peeved. My mind wasn't my own at the moment. It wasn't truly me acting this way, but it was at the same time. I was changing. I'd watched people die, and now he was spewing propaganda about a giant race that I was now a part of.

Because they were driving themselves to the brink of extinction my race was suffering. No, I was suffering. Why did I have to suffer for that? Or Julia? Or Sarah, or Ryan? Or Chris? He watched me carefully, and then tapped my head in a sort of reprimand. I mewl-hissed, in the strangest combination of sounds I could muster.

"I will tell you, but listen well because I shall not repeat it unless demanded by a higher power." He looked like he was about ready to boast about all his accomplishments, and also the slightest bit like a parent. "It was because of your molecular biology, or rather- you're lack thereof."

I raised an eyebrow, or tried to. My biology? That was what this was all about? My body that he took away from me, was the reason I was here? What did that have to do with metal? Organic and metal did not mix…. Everyone knew that. People had been trying, to my knowledge, to mix the two for years. Cyborgs had been failed experiments in kids cartoons.

"Humans are more compatible with us Cybertronians than we had originally thought. We have many similarities that our scientists refused to believe existed. Decepticon and Autobot scientists are naturally stubborn in their beliefs. Where as we assumed point Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-One percent of the population would be compatible with our own metal alloys, we were wrong. It was much higher; a full percent of your sub-species DNA and molecular structure was more on par with ours than we could ever have hoped. The only problem was converting that to our flesh and blood: Metal and Energon. You know about these already, you are a 'fanfiction authoress' I believe, if my sources are true to themselves."

I wanted to hang my head in shame, but instead I waited as my face became warmer. I didn't tell many people about what I did in my free time, because it was my free time. I couldn't tell if it was from me trying to mimic a blush or Starscream closing in on me.

"I told Lord Megatron of my plans," Starscream continued, giving me only a thoughtful glance, "and then proceeded with the four-thousand humans I was provided with. You were in the last batch, number four, the very last received from Barricade, one of the hunters at my disposal. I can only assume the reason the other thirty-nine-hundred ninety-eight experiments were not compatible was the simple fact of DNA, or the lack thereof."

My mouth had long since dropped as I listened to him. It still didn't make any sense how I was chosen. I clicked at him questioningly. No real words. He understood. He clicked to himself in amusement, shocking me to silence.

"I can see you are wondering how we even found you based on DNA… It was simple. Your 'hospitals' are not very well guarded against higher-species invading their computer systems. It took less than a human second for me to have one of our best Hackers reduce their system to mush and take the names of all I needed. You were last on the list. The sole reason being we were not sure your compatibility was on par with our 'programs' need. You had an incomplete strain of DNA in your body, which was more of a risk than we were willing to take. Yes, you humans are readily available and yes, we could have simply picked you based on merit, but there are risked involved also. We don't take risks unless the rewards outweigh the consequences. Your family-unit is larger than anyone else we even considered on taking. You were a back-up in case one of the other experiments died prematurely."

I gaped at him as he spoke of terms I had only heard about, never actually studied. Theories that I had no part in knowing anything about were becoming known to my mind. Reasons I was now in a mechanical body. I was a back up. I wasn't supposed to be here. A back up to an experiment that had already taken so many lives and that I had no reason to be a part of. When I looked at Starscream his optics clearly said that yes, someone had died. Yet, we were like lab-mice. Easily killed, and easily replaced. We reproduced enough people that losing ten thousand wouldn't be that big of a dent. I was starting to understand where he was coming from, but after seeing the aftermath of such an experiment and even being forced to be a part of it. I couldn't bear to think of the faces of the people gone.

I let loose a series of clicks and grinds, throwing in a growl or two when the words wouldn't become clicks. My brain translated into my body faster that I could ever do with a language I knew.

**Loss-Many-Rewards-Few-Worth it**

**Questioning**

"You should be thanking us," he snorted, face scrunching up into a mask of the usual Starscream. Angry and ready to crash and burn. "We've free'd you from your monogamous form. You've been given the privileged body of one of our own. A spark warms itself in your chest cavity, your claws are sharper than you could ever hope, and you will live much longer than your human life span would normally allow you. You'll outlive your kin a thousand times. Others of your species will die long before you. Yet you, who has written enough about our kind and imprisonment should known what follows capture. It is either torture or betrayal to your own self-employed loyalty. In your case, it was a little bit of both. I guess it still is. Even if your point of view was skewed in your stories with a child-like naivety- I cannot say I didn't find it intriguing that some humans wouldn't mind being like us Cybertronians. You are an adaptable race. It was where I took direction for my own experimenting. Yours and others stories. True, I already had a guideline set in place, but your people's works helped to concrete it in my fellow Decepticon minds."

My heart, or spark, or whatever plummeted. He read my stories? He took my point of view and thought humans wouldn't mind being turned into robots? I searched my mind, trying to deny that this was what I had wanted some point in my life. To be recognized for what I wanted… It was true that I quite liked the idea of power and invincibly I found with the Transformers. Changing into anything you could ever want and then flying or running away. It had been a dream though. A simple, childish dream to be what I couldn't. I needed to think of something else… Before this got out of hand. I was desperate to get off the topic of my humanity.

Click-Click-Click-Click

**Talk-No English-Why**

"It's because you are not more than a sparkling." He said, as if it explained everything. Seeing my dumbfounded look he continued, explaining like he would to a two year old. "You have a vocal processor that cannot make human sounds. It can barely function on the basis of Cybertronians speech. I'm amazed you're this far along, actually.

"Technically, you don't have a vocal processor. You are not more than two hours old. It would take another few months before you would be allowed to even consider an upgrade. And before you ask- yes, you must obtain upgrades. Your spark is young, premature even, and needs time to grow before we even think about moving you into another form. Your spark is all that is between you and death. In human words, it is akin to your soul. Your spark is your heart and soul all rolled into one. It makes your body function, and processes Energon into energy. Without your spark in a comfortable casing and big enough space to grow- you will suffer. Quite a lot, might I add."

I didn't say anymore as I felt a yawn coming on and with the exhale of air, I chirped. I was tired, and my limbs felt heavy, but I hadn't done more than just sit in Starscreams hand and listen to him. Then again, he said I was a Sparkling. So, I guessed in my mind it came up with child. A small infant- that's what I was to him. Easily tired and apparently precious enough that he was protecting me. Starscream. My enemy. My protector. My everything.

What was wrong with the world?

"Come. Recharge. I will be back to get you soon as you wake. I have much to teach you, but not while you can barely keep your optics on. And I would think your pack-mate is eager to see if anyone else survived the experiment."

I wanted to say something, chirp my protest at being put to bed like a child, I couldn't get it out though. This all seemed so surreal. I felt like I was in a dream, and when I woke up I would be human again… or dead. Both options seemed to be better than the now. This felt like something I could make up. I couldn't say anything though, as Starscream lowered me gently to the floor of my cube. It seemed to have shrunk. I was positive I would only be able to see at most seven tiles. Starscream was being careful. He'd never been that gentle in my entire time spent here and I blinked at him. I was shocked and could only watch as he walked away, muttering a silent command to the system.

_Dim_. My mind translated for me.

The lights obeyed and I was instantly surrounded by fuzzy, warm light. The harshness was gone, and everything seemed to beam and fluff. I felt tired then and I promised myself that this would be the only time I would listen. My body curled and I found that it was one of the most comfortable places to sleep. Clean, dry, and warm. I hadn't been sure before but the cube's sides were affectionate and radiating a kind of heat that I could only come to love. Like being surrounded in a womb. Cold was not heard of, and I let myself fall into a deep sleep.

Or recharge. Whatever we're supposed to call it.

* * *

Author's note: As I said, Starscream is never going to change. Just because he is a little nicer to me means little to nothing. I am his creation. Beating me for not knowing something makes little sense, even in human standards. It would be like beating a puppy for peeing on the floor. That is how Starscream saw me. Untrained and in need of guidance.

Believe me. It's not Starscream who has changed, it is me. I am also just a sucker for being warm and loved.


	8. Expect the Unexpected

**Expect the Unexpected**

It was easy to wake up the second time. Everything was the same, and I felt as though it should be. It was more… accepted by now. I had time to sleep, and think. With a mewl-like yawn I stretched, then looked around my surroundings. I was stuck in a warm box that was making me feel both happy but sore. My limbs were tender because they'd only been used at most, once. I ached, but it allowed me to realize that it was all real. Everything. In the temperature, I should have been sweating, but now I didn't have the ability. Warmth was simple there, but I knew that if I was cold… I wouldn't necessarily feel it. My body liked the warmth a lot, and I felt happiest when warm, but my body was not going to be happy with such a simple pleasure forever.

I was able, for the first time in a while, to reflect on what was happening.

_I was a human- Am a human. I was a girl- I am a girl. I am what I am._ I couldn't keep my thoughts straight so I thought about things Starscream had said.

"…_Your pack-mate is eager…"_ What was that supposed to mean? I had no pack, and I knew no one from my family was in the same predicament as I was. That meant it had to be someone like me. A human turned into something it wasn't meant to be. An abomination. Then it hit me_. Chris_. I breathed sharply as I got on my unsteady legs to pace. The walking was hard, and uneven, but I managed to get most of my anxiety out by traversing the small distance of my cube. It was tiring. Using new things to move around, as if they were normal, but it helped me to clear my head of unnecessary words.

"_..three-thousands ninety-eight survived…" _He was the other, I hoped. Two survived out of four thousands. It hardly seemed fair. All the world wasn't sunshine. _All's fair in love and war._ I thought to myself as I sat down, tuckered out. I had never had such a hard time walking before and I felt slightly conscious of it. I mewled softly to myself, trying out my vocal cords as I waited for something to happen. I sang my A-B-C's. I worded angry responses to my situation, and even mewled out my sorrow. My voice did eventually become tired, and I felt the strain to even mutter under my breath.

_I'm human and a girl. That will never change. All that has changed is my body, my destiny, and my life. Or does that mean that this has always been my destiny? Have I always been destined for strange and unusual?... Can I still be human, if I don't have the body?_

I looked to the ceiling for a moment, collecting my thoughts. Everything seemed messed up and wrong. I was in denial city and the population was currently me. My throat itched as I cocked it beyond its limit, and I had to look away from the seven-tiled ceiling to stretch my jaw and throat.

_I'm not normal, nor will I ever be…_

_Why me?_

I saw my legs sprawled out in front of me. They were grotesque and oddly… breathtaking. I was growing accustomed to them, but I did not like them. I don't think I would ever like them. I had not liked my other legs, but these seemed an eyesore. I seemed like an abomination. My right clawed hand ran down my left leg without my conscious effort. I could feel ever single place it was touched. The sensors were sensitive and new, responding to everything. I stroked a hydraulic like vein under my armor and jumped as pleasure coursed through me from the simple action. It wasn't like being tickled or hugged, more like when someone scratched your back. Except it was on my leg, and it felt amazing. _Was this how dogs felt when they were scratched behind the ear? _I was hesitant to do it again, because this hardly seemed like the proper thing to do… but it was. I was learning my body inside and out. That couldn't be wrong… could it?

So what if it was odd, the way I did it? Everything about me was odd.

I didn't know Starscream was there until I felt the lightest pressure on my head. Feather light compared to my own groping, and I relaxed as he stroked the very top of my head. It wasn't conscious for everyone wondering about the total change in personality. I was doped up the last time, and now I had just woken up. I was frazzled and my body needed calming. It latched onto Starscreams warmth and guidance. Starscream knew just how to calm down the body of a youngling that had no control over itself. Namely me. I pushed my head against his finger and felt warmth all over my head. If I had animal ears they would be down my neck from the nice feelings I was getting. No, it wasn't sexual. It was a more familiar pleasure coursing through my systems. Parental. Almost.

When he patted my head, I couldn't feel any negative emotion. My body wiped the feelings out of my system and I enjoyed.

Damn it.

I realized only after he had taken his hand away that it was my body. All my bodies fault. It craved Starscreams contact like I had craved human contact. I was addicted already. I didn't like it, but there was little I could do. It was one extreme after the other. It was like being born addicted to meth or cocaine. I never had a chance.

With a sigh I turned around to look up at Starscream. I even managed to stand erect as I watched him. My throat tinged in soreness but I stood my ground. He watched me right back. His eyes were not as scary as they had been. I wish I could say I had been terrified of him, but I couldn't be. It was starting to be impossible. He'd been my only contact for a few days, and even now I could feel a connection to him I didn't approve of.

_**Happening-What- Me**_

I clicked at him as he lowered his hand so I could get on. He didn't pick me up nor answer, he waited for my next move. With a sigh I crawled on, and he raised me to his shoulder, and told me in a stern voice to climb on. Parental again. I was hesitant for a good many reasons, but I did it and held on for dear life as he started to explain.

"You do not feel like yourself." He commented and I nodded, clicking my agreement. "It's not your mind. It's your body." He told me as he started walking out of the only room I had known in this new life. I should have been scared. I should have been a lot of things. This would take a lot of time to get used to.

"Your body does not approve of your thoughts against me. I'm sure you have noticed," We exited the room into a brightly lit corridor that I should have remembered, but couldn't for the life of me. "Anger. Uncomfortability. Hate. But your mind has no true control of your new body's instincts. Your body acknowledges me as its creator, and it doesn't understand why its mind is fighting itself.

"In essence, it could be compared to thinking its mind was having a tantrum over parenting troubles. Once it feels you are unnecessarily risking its well being, it will start to reply to everything with programming. Almost as if your human body would get a virus, but much, much more extreme. And before you ask, it will win. Always."

Starscream never yelled, or became pointlessly upset with me. I was learning this fast. You don't yell at a baby for blubbering spit on you. He explained more about my internal structure. How my body would protect me always, and never allow me to hurt myself. When was older I could over-ride that instinct, but for now it was ingrained in my processor to protect myself first and fore-most. He was calm as we walked down the hallway to some destination I was going to love. At times it's the only place I belong. To?

Where Chris was at.

Now Chris is not like me. Starscream explained it as different models. Let's say I was a ground-leaver, a tank, and he was a ground-runner, a car, those would be two different models. In human, it would be the simple difference of a plane and a convertible. He was the convertible and I was the plane. I do not have my final model yet. I might not have it for a long time. Ever actually, but that is a different matter. All that matters at the moment is Chris being different than me.

Very different.

It's almost ethnicity at times with Starscream. Like Chris will always be stuck in such a 'despicable' form. He's a ground-runner. I'm apparently an air-hugger. Air-lover. Hater-of-touching-ground. Starscream is a racist, but I would accept no less from the Decepticon Air-commander, which he is. I had my doubts, but it was one of the few talks we had over my short Sparkling existence that makes sense. His rank. My rank. Chris's rank. Decepticon propaganda. Starscream was one of the head-honcho's, and nobody was willing to really get in his way. Especially his trine mates.

I mean, he was willing to kill.

When we entered the room that was Chris's, it held the lone box I was used to seeing in mine own room. It wasn't much bigger than mine, and I felt myself lean forward unconsciously. I almost fell, but Starscream held me to his shoulder with one of his fingers. A light push and I was back to curiously staring at the box. It was black, already different than mine own. It was much less tall. Almost half the height from what I could tell. When we had gotten considerably closer, a few giant Transformer steps later, I heard noises.

It must have been very loud because I could hear it on Starscream's shoulder. The noise was metal against metal, in an all out brawl against itself. I was curious why Starscream would bring me so close to such a dangerous sound, because at this point I hadn't known that Chris was here.

"He is trying to dig his way out." Starscream responded to my unasked question. With a snort his lip curled in distaste. _Starscream doesn't like him, so he must be a good person. _I wanted it to be Chris, but at that time, I had no clue what to expect.

"I'm not his creator so he does not feel the same inexplicable need to be obedient to his body, as you do. He's different." He told me as we walked closer. I was way beyond curious. Wasn't Starscream the experiment head? He hadn't let many other Deceptions even breath on us once we had began our 'bettering'. I didn't get my answer, because I never asked. I learned later that one of Starscream's trine-mates was one to watch out for, because he was Chris's surrogate-creator. I can't remember the name at the moment. It's from the TV-show though.

**Chirp-Growl-Growl-Click**

Was the greeting we received as our shadow fell over the box. I understood it was a mix of both anger, unadulterated hated, and a splash of bitterness, but the meanings were lost to me. I felt like it was awhole new dialect being tossed onto my ears, or audio-receptors. Starscream didn't look pleased at his language, whatever he'd said. He growled right back at the tiny metal being within. Starscream let me see into the box anyway and what I saw almost made me fall off, but I know Starscream would never have allowed that. I still wasn't sure who it was.

He was like me. A baby at most. But he was as humanoid as you could get. Strong legs, firm arms with four fingers not claws, and a long body that was hunched over in distress. He was walking, and standing, and even growling in an almost impeccable human accent. And it wasn't a moment after that he was staring at me in awe. We both were, now that I think about it. I clicked a greeting, hesitantly. He chittered almost nonstop as he greeted me back. Then I realized. I understood.

**You-Who- Me-What**

I could understand he wanted my name, and he told me his, but it was lost to me. His name was just letters and sounds. It was human, but translating that from English to Cybertronian and back… things got lost in translation. It sounded like Crash Lift. So I cocked my head up at Starscream. I felt like he was obligated to translate. He didn't hesitate to supply an answer. I should have dwelled on the meanings of Starscream being nice to me, but at that moment it was all about the youngling like me.

"He asked for your name, and told you his is Chris, or as close to Chris as our language could manage. Crash lift. Quite pathetic name, if you ask me. Shall I tell him your name? Because he will not understand if you tell him, just as you did not understand him telling you." I felt shock as I realized for the first time. This was in fact Chris. The same Chris who went through hell and back with me. Sometimes apart, and others close by.

I didn't let Starscream talk for me. I did. I chirped out a trill of what I could only call a sentence. Summing up the message it would closely translate to: _Chris! Chris!_ ( I had to try out the name a little) _Its me. Jessica_.( My name actually sounded like Metal Screech Ding Scratch, which Starscream found annoyingly pleasing.) _Chris!_ I can't really tell you the meanings behind my sounds. They have their own meanings with how I say them. Loud, or angry, or soft and nice. It took Chris a moment to work through the sounds, and a muttered 'Jessica' under Starscreams breath for him to get it.

Chris chirped back at me, and I could roughly translate his growls as questioning: _Jessica? Is it really you? You survived!_ I purred in my throat in pleasure. Half the time I didn't understand why I did half of what I did, now was not an exception. My body reacted to my thoughts, and half the time my thoughts didn't have a concrete or straight objective. They just were. Instinct had never been as scary as when I finally let my purr die. I kind of wished I could be down in the cage with Chris, and then, just like that, I was being lowered into the box.

I looked up to see Starscream watching me. Not just watching me so I didn't fall off, but watching me as a test subject. Scientist eyes. I growl-clicked at him, and he just smiled as he ushered me off his palm. I landed with a 'ompfh' and was immediately greeted with Chris's face closer than I thought possible. I hadn't even closed my eyes for three seconds. I squeaked as I stumbled on to my butt. I couldn't help but growl at Chris until I noticed he was making an unfamiliar noise.

Laughter. It grated against my ears, but I could tell it was not meant to harm me. I watched as Chris fell on his back laughing at my face. Apparently it was funny. I huffed and then tackled him, trying to show that I was in fact not funny. I was strong, not weakened. Once again, not something I can explain. I was the small teenager who sat at lunch alone, not the big quarter back who became enraged with a wrong look.

This is one very clear example of how my body reacts before my brain processes it. He stopped laughing when I jumped on him, sure, but he also started to wrestle with me. Me. Weakened from just waking up. Me. The person who can't even walk right at the moment.

We both sort of giggled as we tackled each other, and I laughed. For the first time in a long time. It didn't matter that Starscream was hovering over us. Willing to stop up. All that mattered was that someone else was still alive. Someone could recount the tales of the dead. Didn't somebody have to? Somebody else was seeing the almost protective side of Starscream that I wouldn't ever have dreamed of seeing. Someone was living through the same hell I was. It made me all kinds of happy that I wasn't going to go through this alone.

If that didn't make me a sick person for being happy, I don't know what does.

I chirped and then sat on my butt as I heaved a sigh of relief. The world was starting to make sense again. Awful, horrible, kinda-messed up sense, but sense none the less. Chris and I just sat and enjoyed each other's company, before I ultimately poked his knee. His eyes widened, and then he grinned and narrowed his eyes as he poked me back. It tingled, and I chuckled. Strange sounding. It echoed around the box and I poked him back, again. This lasted for a few more minutes, because that's when our attention span was interrupted by Starscream's hand. I click-growled as I was picked up. It was very unexpected and Starscream tried his very hardest to shush me as he put me in his other hand.

"It's time for your tests-" I protested loudly, even louder at that. Tests. Experiments. Ugh. I thought I was done with those. My memories were still half-way fresh of tortureous 'betterings' and feeling unsafe all the time. I was just getting used to everything. I didn't want to go back to that. Selfish me did not want to go all martyrdom. I'd seen so many deaths that hadn't mattered.

So I tried to scramble off his hand, forgetting momentarily that it wasn't the smartest idea. I was almost four stories high. Starscream held me down as I felt us walking away. Chris, who had also been protesting, was becoming just a distant voice.

"This will be like your 'doctor' examinations. You're practically a newborn!" I sniffled as I listened to him, not realizing that I had started to cry for him. No tears, but still the sound and emotional turmoil. My body shook in fear, because- honestly? I still didn't trust Starscream. My body fought me in my distrust. He was being nice, and I was being half-way reasonable, but he wouldn't continue to be if he tried to experiment on me.

"I will not hurt you." Starscream stressed the words 'hurt you.' I was being held down still, not hard, but very restrained.

I didn't know why words calmed me down, until I remembered that my body needed what was 'best for me'. It was necessary to calm down when the threat of malfunction or death was gone. Starscream wasn't being a threat. I didn't feel like I was going to die… He was acting in my best interest, in a strange I-just-killed-a-whole-bunch-of-people-but-you're-different kind of way. My body relaxed, even as I was being held down. Starscream wasn't my body's enemy, just my minds. I can't think of an accurate way to say it, without sounding like a child with Stockholm syndrome. I wasn't being mistreated anymore, and I wasn't seeing anymore death or destruction. Nobody was in any immediate danger, that I could see with mine own eyes. The world wasn't right, but it was better that I had seen it in a while.

All in all… I felt like this wasn't reality. Like I was still sleeping, and until the time that reality came crashing down- I was going to enjoy it. I was settling down, trying to calm myself. Trying to convince myself that Starscream wouldn't have went through all the trouble to make me, just so he could kill me.

Who would have guessed that reality would crash going through the next door?

Startscream refused to let me up, even though I was behaving, mostly. I finally wriggled my way into a nice position, where I could see outside of his entwined fingers. Nothing bad, right? I just saw a couple of monitors and the like, things you would normally see in a Transformers Headquarters. What I almost fainted at the sight of? Computer screens depicting what I had hoped to forget, and was already thinking was a dream.

What looked like millions of humans, I knew would only be four thousand. The screens flashed between cages, and all of the footage was dated, stamped, and processed. Some were dated two weeks after the day I was kidnapped others only a week, and it tumbled through a long line of agonized faces. Next to the screens were the number counts. Lost and accounted for it equaled four thousand. At whatever stage in the sick experiments, the count was now at an even two thousand, and dropping steadily. I caught a glimpse of quite a few Decepticons collecting and recollecting data. Pausing on a particularly horrified face of pain. I could only shiver as I heard Starscream bark out a few commands in Cybertronian. It was a much more complex language than my chirps and growls, and I understood little. Another bot commented about something, and the next thing I knew, I was in total darkness. I guess Starscream had gotten the word that I had been looking and was trying to protect my eyes.

The damage had been done though, and I sat in shock as Starscream brought me to where ever it was he was doing the tests. I shivered as I remembered what I had thrown into the back of my mind. The death came first, the self loathing second, and then thirdly the guilt that I hadn't been able to do anything.

How had I just pushed all that death away? Here I was. Sitting. In the palm of the very person who killed thousands of people for the sake of an experiment that held no merit, except for me and one other. To me, it meant a whole lot of nothing that I was alive. To Chris, maybe it meant more. To the thousands who died, I can only guess it meant ten times the nothing I felt. Which, had to be something… right?

What did my life mean? I was one of two that survived, out of four thousand… doesn't that constitute for something? What was my life meant for? I sat in the darkness mulling over my thoughts as Starscream finally stopped, opened his hands, and plopped me on the table top. He wasn't as gentle as before, but I didn't mind. It was just Starscream. I looked up to see Starscream preparing to scan me. I just sighed and let him, feeling the warmth of the red laser fizz over my body.

I wanted to know so much about my situation. I wanted to know why I, a high school, survived out of four thousand other high schooler's and college goers'. I wasn't special, as much as Starscream believe I was. I wasn't my characters. I wasn't strong. I was weak. I wasn't who I used to be, and I knew that. It hurt, but I knew that I wouldn't be going back to the person I wanted to be. I was a Decepticon, with sharp claws and a vicious creator. What chance did I have of ever upholding any ethics I valued? I was a coward for even thinking I had a hold on them.

"Do you feel any pain? Anywhere?" His questions were more statements that I was asked to answer. I shook my head and he continued asking meaningless and boring questions. Yes-No, mostly. Did I feel hungry? Was my brain working? Did I have the need to kill? What did I remember? I answered them all as nicely as I could, until he asked the final question.

"What was your human unit like?" He'd been taking notes in his own unique way, with a data pad thing. Only, he didn't write, he thought and it was there. Niffty, huh? I almost didn't hear the question right, but when I realized what he was asking I could only stop and stare at him. Was it aimed at me in curiosity? True curiosity? Was it some kind of ploy…

He misjudged my silence for hesitancy or understanding that was limited.

"Your creators- Your pack-mates- anyone involved in your everyday life." It was like he thought I was stupid and I snapped at him with a growl, the largest tone I'd been able to take against him to-date. He seemed a little taken aback, and listened while I explained as well as I could in my childish language.

I'm not going to give you the translation of chirps-whirls and mewls, it went like this:

My family was the best thing to happen to me. Point blank. My friends kept me on my feet as I learned my way in the world. Absolutely. My co-workers helped me understand reality. You threw all that to hell with this experiment. I could be dead and then none of it would matter, now would it?

The silence in the room afterwards was palpable, and I shivered as I watched Starscreams red eyes narrow. Maybe I'd pushed him too far, but now the reality of the situation was really hitting home. I wasn't going to keep acting like a lost school girl who was attached to the hip with her dad. I was forced to feel emotional ties with him, but that was as far as my relationship had progressed. I couldn't be indifferent, so I settled for sarcastic. I wasn't hurting him or my body with that.

I was ready and tensed for him to hit me. It seemed a reasonable punishment for speaking out, right? I expected he would after such a blatant disregard for him. His command. I wasn't ready for his laugh. Angelic compared to the dark chuckles I'd heard. He was genuinely amused, and I could tell as I looked up at him that he wasn't even the slightest bit mad or angry.

"Here I thought I'd gotten a dud. Finally, a spark of your 'human spunkiness'," He said, grinning as he picked me up and placed me in his hand. To say I was shocked would be the understatement of the century-No, millennium. He placed me on his shoulder and walked out without saying another thing. He chuckled every step or so, but I found it was much better him being amused by me than him being angry. My response had the opposite effect. Was this normal in Sparklings? He was treating me as if he liked me going against him. What did he think this was? A game?

"This is not how you expected this to be." Starscreams statement came out of the blue and I looked up, caught out of my thoughts. He wasn't looking at me, but he did give me a glance- as if to confirm, that, yes I hadn't. He just chuckled darkly again, as he walked through a door and into my little containment room. It was a very small room, most likely made just to hold the one table I was kept on. I may never know though, because nobody tells me anything. I squeaked in protest, because I knew what this meant. Time to sleep.

I hadn't had time to fully think about my situation, plus I didn't want to even entertain the idea of sleep. Starscream acted like he had an ulterior motive, but I couldn't figure it out. He had me and Chris, but what did he want us for? Were we just an experiment gone right? Starscream wrapped his hand around me as I struggled, and then he gave me a sharp reprimand, as though I was a child.

No.

I chirped angrily at him as he placed me on the floor of my box. It was warm and getting hotter every moment. The perfect trap for sleep. I would succumb, but not before I thought. I stood up as soon as I was in the box and watched as Starscream ordered the lights to dim and leave me. I growled at his shadow against the wall as he left. The little space was not at a more than comfortable heat, it had stopped rising and now I was basking in warmth. It made me dizzy and light headed, so I couldn't actually get anything thought out, except, "Damn warmth."

Then, within the minute, I was sleeping as though I had not a care in the world.


	9. Disillusions of Grandeur shattered

**Disillusions of Grandeur shattered**

"Why are we here?" I asked Chris one day, as we sat on the floor of Starscreams lab. Our language with each other had gotten progressively stronger, and now translating our words was easier. We had almost totally sworn off English. I had stubbornly hung onto my language though, nothing would ever take it away. I had actually been dreaming in Cybertronian the past few days, and I didn't know what scared me more: The fact that I was dreaming or that it was in Cybertronian. Apparently, dreams didn't happen with giant robots, but it happened with me. Yippie, abnormality factor one, me zero.

"I don't know. Why don't you ask your _creator_?" He responded in normal Chris fashion: Sarcastic and to the point, along with a little ass-munchkiness, but something was also off with him. These past few days, Chris had been acting distant. He didn't share human humor with me anymore. Laughing was normal, but he sometimes didn't understand simple jokes. I chalked it up to culture differences… Secretly though? I was afraid that his creator Skywarp had done something to him. It was more plausible than Starscream doing anything. I also had a faint idea of what it was…

"He's not my-" I started to reply before I cut myself off. I guess it was true enough that Starscream was my creator, no matter how much I disliked it. It just disturbed me that Chris used 'former terminology. I looked over to see Chris with the smuggest smile on his face, as if we had never been in a life-or-death situation and this was normal. As if he had been born with everything he now possessed.

I snorted at him as I took a swipe at his head, hiding my confusion behind a front of indifference. He dodged it easily and laughed in my face, not at all worried about me. It was easy to be ourselves when we weren't being watched constantly. He looked more at peace than he had in probably two weeks. Or, well… He looked more peaceful these past few days.

Two weeks, though.

That's how long we'd been here, I think. We were not permitted to have any outside contact until our fifth week. Starscream and Skywarp decided on some malarkey about our health and wellness. Rather, it was all a culture shock experiment I think. I looked over at the feet of Starscream as he bustled around the lab, grabbing things and moving test-tubes and what-not. Over the weeks, he'd become more of a parental figure than I would have thought possible. He dictated my schedule as if I was four, which was in fact both nice and annoying. He watched me as protectively as he did his non-alive experiments. He was an ass at moments- all lot of the time. He was the air commander to almost a thousand flying-types, or aerial bots, and had a fleet of Trines, a bunch of trios of seekers, at his command. He also had an Elite Seeker squad that was easily the hardest position to obtain. All of those people loyal to him. He was loyal to Megatron.

Yet, he was still so different than I had ever made him to be in my stories.

He's more complex. His very psyche is a mess, but so is mine. He is crazy, but so very, _very _brilliant. I mean he had to be when he managed to turn two humans into something completely outside their biological means. He's ruthless, and is more than willing to rip someone's arm right out of their sockets for me- but so was everyone else on base that I had met. Apparently, because this is a fun fact, all Transformers are protective of Sparkling and Younglings. I don't even know what kind of animal to liken that to. Maybe a wolf pack, who all take care of the young. An irresistible pull to protect and train them. Transformer Sparklings are a rare and beautiful thing, no matter how they are created. Decepticons, Autobots, Neutrals- nobody held any exception to the rule.

Younglings are not as well protected. Still protected, but never coveted. It's strange that babies are protected while young bots are trained. Starscream told me I would be going through what he called, 'basic training', in the next few months from now. A normal sparkling-turned-youngling would be given almost two years of just rest and relaxation, but Chris and I would not get that luxury. I had a feeling it was going to be quite ruthless, too. Starscream fawned over me, at the moment. But when I received my new form in a little less than four weeks, I knew his song would change. I looked at him as he strutted in his lab, control and poised as he worked. I remember thinking about how much he loved to just preen himself. He was very vain like that…

_Bang! Crishk!_

I heard the sound of the door opening before I looked to see Chris's creator walk in. I chuckled as Chris gave a muffled cry of surprise as he was scooped up. Skywarp had no problem being rough and rowdy with us, and that was one reason why Starscream came and picked me up. Protectively. He was wary as he watched Skywarp, as if he was a wild animal. In some ways he was. I mean, even dogs bite that hand that feeds them sometimes.

Skywarp was a big bot, with a lean figure similar to Starscream's. His wings were tipped oddly with orange paint, and his body all black. There was a story behind it, but I wasn't sure what it was. Skywarp promised to tell me when I was older. I almost wanted to tell him that I was practically full-grown before they decided to interfere with my life, but I thought better about it when Starscream gave me the _'look'_. The look consisted of 'don't-even-think-about-it-or-you-will-regret-it'. Skywarp's grin was both feral and cheshire, as if it was purposely dipped in a pool of good intentions.

"Hello, my little Cre-at-ion! And how are you today?" He asked as he scratched Chris right on the back, one of the most sensitive spots on our small bodies. He pronounced the Creation part strangely, as if he was drawing out a bunch of letters thrown awkwardly together. Chris responded like always - with a purr-click. It was really cute, and we had decided after a while to name ourselves baby 'formers, after just how mini-transformer-ish we looked. That had been almost a week ago. After I had been able to accept what I was.

Not-human. The long night of staring at the ceiling and realizing that it wasn't going to change any time soon gave me a little push in the right direction. I decided I was at least going to stop sulking and try and learn how to live. Even if that consisted being petted.

It took me a while to accept life here and it was hard, but not as painful as I thought it would be. Sure I went through a period of denial, but I survived. My sanity had not. I smiled as Skywarp patted Chris and asked him what Starscream had 'done' to him. Starscream snorted, and then they talked. They playfully bantered back and forth, as they did every day. Something about it was so alien though, that I had no chance of actually keeping up with the strange terms. Nothing that FanFiction had ever prepared me for.

I had wondered how Chris had dealt with all the pain and emotional turmoil that I had refused to let myself feel. Then, he told me that Skyward had just 'taken it away', then he ran off to play with a piece of string the size of a boa-constrictor. I could speculate what that meant, but I refused to believe any petty rumors my mind came up with. Brain wash. Mind control. Memory wipe. He never elaborated, and I never felt the need to ask Starscream for the same. I felt numb for the first few days after remembering all the killings, but I got over myself. People died. Starscream had actually told me to 'move on.' I couldn't **not** listen to him, because my programming told me to.

Such an odd thing, programming that is. I can all but ignore it when it takes over my body, unless Starscream is involved. I'm like a puddle of mush in Starscreams hands, and I have a feeling it was a failsafe installed by who ever had first created a Sparkling. Sparklings were coveted like diamonds, and stealing them was one of the darkest arts Transformers learned. Stealing transformer sparklings was like stealing a car with a tracking unit on it that refused to be taken without its creators consent. A small palm sized car, but metal none-the-less. Starscream explained it to me as a way of always knowing when the sparkling was in danger; a connection was formed at creation. A deep bond that could not, and would not, be broken. Probably ever. At first I didn't believe him, until he actually spoke to me. In my mind.

I blacked out and awoke a few minutes later. He looked concerned, but I wasn't sure if that was an act. He could be concerned, but not for me. Sure, my body he could be concerned about, but my mind was good as cannon fodder. My mind wouldn't stop spinning for the next few days, almost a week. I had only gotten out of my funk in the past few hours. Hanging out with Chris and acting as if we were in fact normal. That was all shot to hell as Skywarp bid Starscream fare-well and took Chris, chirping all the way. Chris didn't look the slightest bit peeved that he was being taken away from me. He didn't look hurt at the separation. He didn't even look back.

A lot had changed. I remembered a time when both Chris and I hated our 'creators'. Or at least we tried to hate them as best our minds could. They'd destroyed our lives. Single handedly taking away anything that was important. Now, it was as if their will was all that mattered. Chris fawned over Skywarp like a puppy, and I fared only slightly better with Starscream. I just couldn't help but cuddle.

With a sigh I looked up to see Starscream gazing at me with an unreadable expression.

"What is the matter this time, Child?" He asked me as he patted my head with his index finger. He refused to call me Jessica. I didn't say anything, even though the feelings I was getting were pleasant enough. The world was still so wrong, and I had yet to fully accept it. People were dead. I couldn't just cover that up.

"What is my purpose?" I asked him, finally. His insistent petting stopped momentarily, before continuing as if he hadn't even skipped a beat. He didn't speak to me for a moment. He didn't even actually speak when he broke the silence. It was all in my head. Everything was, sometimes. He liked to talk with me in my mind. Breaking down whatever barriers I had constructed for myself. I could only bask in the warmth and intelligence mind of Starscream. I wasn't safe anywhere.

"Surviving." It wasn't anything more than a whisper, but it chilled me to my very marrow. It planted itself so deep into my very being that I believe it. Whole heartedly, or spark-edly. In the real world, Starscream sounded like an angry dictator, ready to kill anyone for wronging him, no matter how small the mistaken. In my mind, he was the world's best seducer. He could convince someone to starve themselves with a voice like that. It was compelling.

"At the price of my sanity and humanity?" I asked him, wearily. His fingers glided down the ridges on my back as if I were a pool of water. I arched into his fingers, feeling almost like a feline.

"If you must."

I was taken aback by that, and managed to wiggle myself out from under his hand to look at him. His eyes were not evil. His body was relaxed. He was being truthful. He was being himself. We'd never had a talk like this before. Yes, we had talked about how he hated humans. And, yes, we had also talked about how much humans were stupid, but we never talked about me as a human. He always would sugar coat things in his own way, as if I was truly a sparkling. Maybe he was finally realizing what it meant that I was a ' teenager'.

"What about everyone else?" I complained, realizing only after that I sounded like a true sparkling.

"What about them, child?" He asked, almost bemused.

I almost responded with a snappy comeback, but it got caught in my throat. A thought was probably pushed into my mind by Starscream. _Why did they matter?_ People. They didn't know what I was going through every day. They lived, while I tried to survive in a world thrust onto me. They lived, but I survived. Which one was better? More fulfilling?

"Kind of like being born again, isn't it?" He asked, extracting my thoughts and responding accordingly.

_It really was. Wasn't it?_ We humans gave birth to children and them, knowing nothing else but to survive deal with life, no matter the setting. Malaria infected jungle. A minority family. Ten years ago. Three thousand years ago. Twins. Woman.

The world wasn't fair. So why would I complain about it? What right did I have to scream my displeasure with the universe? I was one small speck, turned slightly larger with circumstance, that was floating around in the world at large.

Then, I asked Starscream something I would regret.

"Why does Chris ignore everything?"

"He used to at least pretend to listen to my ranting, but now he just acts like he has never heard me talk back…"

It was oh-so silent for only a moment before he spoke.

"Because Chris has accepted that nothing happened. That he will always be this way. He accepted that he was never human."

I froze. The finger that insistently offered me protection and warmth had stopped being so comforting. Chris was not all there? _So it was true._ I hadn't wanted to ask. I hadn't wanted to know that the possibility was there for me.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Chris wasn't the same, but he was. I guess I had known. I guess I just had pushed it into the very farthest recesses in my mind. I had asked, and the answer was irreparable to my image of Chris. The new image of him anyway. The ugly and disfigured human doll that thought himself handsome. Like an elephant who thought he was a duck.

"How?"

"How?" Starscream asked back at me, this time darkly amused. "Skywarp muddled his memories. Weakened his resolve for going back. Changing his feelings. Implemented synthetic outlooks. Implanted false and happy memories of another time, but most of all he made his human life just a dream. He made Chris want this new life enough to forget about his old one.

In a way, Skywarp weakened him. Do you wish the same blissfully ignorant self?"

I tried to understand why Chris would betray his race so easily. Why he would betray me so easily. It was so easy to see why, and I pushed it from my mind. It was true we had only known each other for a couple of days, but those days had spawned hope in my chest. The feeble feelings of happiness clutched me when I thought of the fact that Chris was here with me. Now, Chris was here, but I didn't want this new version of him. Chris 2.0. Was his pain so awful, that he just couldn't stand it anymore? That he couldn't stand me anymore? Was being a human in a robot body so awful that he wanted to start fresh… Was he right in his assumption? I didn't answer Starscream, nor did he want an answer from me. He had just wanted me to ponder and continue asking. He wanted me to think.

"You said weak. Why is he weak?" I inquired after thinking it over for quite a while. It was tempting. The idea that somebody could take away all the pain and unhappiness… All the memories… All the life…

"He is weak because he gave up." It was a statement with such conviction behind it I almost flinched. "You and him, you both survived an operation, an experiment if you will, that challenged every aspect of yourself. Your life, your body, your mind. You did not just survive on genome. You wanted survival bad enough that you snatched it out of death's grasps. I had only planned for one of you to survive, but when both of you survived I had to entrust the second to Skywarp. I would not be able to perform the operation needed for both of you in the span of time that you could survive in."

"It does not stop the pain. The emotion. The memories." I finally replied after almost half a minute of him patting my head, slowly lowering my core temperature. I was feeling sleepy, but that did not deter me from asking. "Why would someone do that? Life is sacred. He knew that his memories would be going too, right?" It was mostly addressed to myself but Starscream answered as I drowsily rested my head on his palm. I never seemed to be able to sleep enough.

"Only cowards give up, and yes. He knew. He accepted it, _reluctantly_, as a way to end the pain." He said as he started to warm his hand, to get me ready for a nice recharge. My body responded like an ice cube, and I melted right in. His answer struck me as odd, because I pictured him as a coward, even now. Not an honorable fighter. It wasn't till later that I found out he is the most honorable one on the Decepticon's side.

"Why do you answer all of my questions, when you could just erase my mind?" It was a stupid question, but I wanted an answer. I was curious, so kill me.

He was silent.

"Because you are one of us now. The choice is yours to accept it. The alternative is not pretty. Plus, the procedure is not tested or safe. I refuse to spend my time working for a human month, only to throw out the finished project because of a malfunction." He snorted, adding. "Even if I wanted to, you make a wonderful 'control' for this experiment."

He started to bring me to my grab-and-go box. Kind of like a playpen, only my box. It was smaller, and situated in Starscreams lab so I could nap without him traveling all the way to my room. I fought to stay awake for a moment more. One more question. One more answer.

"What am I?" I asked, snuggling in my favorite groove of his hand, unconsciously.

"As I have said before. A survivor. A hybrid of death and life. You are whatever you wish to be. Only, at the moment, you have the body of a sparkling. Soon, it will be what I wish it. Soon."

As I Starscream put me in my box, and I lay down to doze, he crooned to me, "Sleep."

When I am heavy-eyed, the compulsion of Starscreams voice hits me ten times more than if I am fully awake and ready to take it. It didn't take long for me to count the seven tiles three times before falling asleep and dreaming about Chris and myself. Human. Running. Living.


	10. Things Change

This chapter is long... but I hope it makes sense.

* * *

**Things Change**

"It was not your place." Starscream snarled at Skywarp, both of them facing off armed with their god-given talents. Metal teeth were being gnashed as they bickered. Claws had already come out to play. The stress level in the room was enough to make the US government go to D-con-5. Wondering why yet?

Well, I did something to make Skywarp upset. Really, really upset. Starscream was in super-dupper protective Sparkling mode about ready to rip the Seekers wings right off. Chris and I were both sitting silent as they fought with words. He leaned against my shoulder for support, not quite recovered from his fainting only a moment before. Neither of us wanted to see it get to fists, and neither of us wanted to talk to each other at the moment. Comfort of body heat was a different matter entirely though. We were still very much ruled by senses.

It had been an awful day, almost a week since Starscream's talk with me, about what exactly was going on in my narrow world. And only five or six days since I non-verbally ignored Chris. You guy's don't know about that yet, though. I'm gonna explaining it, but to do so… it's got to be chronological. A lot of this crap has to be. Now, here we were, Chris and I, with two angry, giant cybernetic robots facing off at each other. Both ready to spit fire for what they believe in. And for what? Or better yet, Who?

Me, of course. Or better yet, my life.

I will have to start at the beginning, because it _does_ make a lot of sense they would be fighting, but over **me**? It isn't logicical, to me anyway. I'll start at the very beginning, and I mean way, way back:

This is where I think it started. As always I was playing with something I shouldn't have. Chris's emotions.

Chris and I both felt different to each other. To me, we felt alien and weird, but Chris told me once: I felt like 'regular'. I had been curious for a long time afterwards. Well, until Starscream told me that Chris had given up and succumbed to Skywarp's brain-washing, then I realized it was because he didn't remember or acknowledge the fact that I was anything but a transformer. Like him.

I won't lie and say I accepted Chris being 'gone'. That's where I started the first little inklings of dislike for me started with Skywarp. I had been furious the next time I had seen Chris. It burned in my gut like a fire that refused to be quenched. My mind was not my own as I felt the need to hurt him for hurting me. I refused to play with him. He tried to throw a scrap piece of metal like a ball at me, and I ignored it. That was something I never did. We always played. I was someone he could rely on for such things. We were practically siblings. Chris had been confused, cocking his head and opening his optics till they were as large as saucers: he was hurt by my actions.

Then, he started crying.

I remembered feeling immensely horrible afterwards, and even tried to comfort him, but he was inconsolable. That was my first strike with Skywarp. He had still been in the room when I had refused to play and, after picking Chris up, glared at me. He was usually childish and brutish, but this was very frightening in and of itself. I'd never seen a Transformer that pissed at me since I was human. Starscream came over not a moment later to pick me up, also.

I felt only so much protection.

They shared a few words over the hick-up sobs of Chris, which I couldn't hear because I refused to listen. I shut off my ears and tried to drown my sorrows in silence. Was it my fault that he changed? My conscious told me I was being mean, but my mind told me I was just protecting myself. The only way I could figure: by winning a fight of meanness. I snuggled into Starscreams fingers, trying to figure out what was wrong with the world. Dazed I realized. I was truly alone now. Chris was here, but not. We were both in the same situation, but he had already been given a head start in acceptance. I was still stuck at the stage known as denial. I wanted to feel alright, but I wasn't. I was jealous. That feeling confused me. Starscream let his finger dance a path down my back. Comforting.

"Is this because he is different?" Starscream asked as Skywarp walked away with a distraught sparkling in his hand, who had refused to stop his sobbing. At first, I didn't know it was directed at me until he repeated the question into my mind. I nodded my head, not prepared to speak at that moment. I felt like I was throwing a low-blowing tantrum. It was below me, and I knew that.

But anger was also known, and at that moment, more accepted than trying to do that right thing.

I had been raised better than that, but I couldn't help but feel angry. Childish anger. Anger that I have never felt before. I guess this was what it must have felt like to be betrayed.

Starscream only sighed, a low wind shaking his engines.

"Here I thought you _humans_ were accepting beings…" He started to say, watching my reaction from the corner of his eye. I didn't really notice it until after the conversation that followed. It sparked something in me. Indignation.

"We are!" I interrupted him, like he knew I would. "I j-just feel _betrayed_." I finally spluttered after glaring at a crease in Starscreams palm. I traced it roughly before continuing, realizing for the first time that I was hurt by the event, too. Really figuring it out for the first time why I was acting as I was. "**We** were in this together. **We both** hated you. **We both** were surviving, but it doesn't feel that way anymore. **I'm** the only one left."

"How does that make you feel? How he left you. Without a good-bye." He interrupted before I could continue- his sharp eyes boring into mine as he poked me right where it hurt. I felt small under that gaze. I knew he wanted me to think, but I didn't want to think. It didn't seem fair. Life didn't seem fair. Everything was against me.

"I don't like it!" I hick-up'ed, my little fists scratched his large one as I coiled my fingers together. "He was all I had left. He-he was my only friend here. What right did he have to just leave me? To essentially commit suicide." I was breathing hard, even though I didn't have to. It was a human reflex. I knew I should have been crying, but I had a new body and it didn't cry. So I settled for hick-up's and moping.

"How do you think he must have felt, to make that choice?" Starscream said, stopping me in my tracks as I sniffled. I didn't want to think about it, but Starscream was pushing the question on my mind.

" The Cybertronian race is close to extinction, and we all made the choice to continue on the path. We do not regret our choices of domination, at least on the Decepticon side, because that is all we have left. The Autobots have made their choice to fight against us. The Decepticons have made the choice to continue towards survival. I have made my choice to change you. Chris has made his choice to change himself. You have made your own choice to stay the same." He let me breath before continuing. "We cannot change the past, now can we? We can only walk forward."

I didn't like how Starscream worded things. It made him seem right. _All the time._ Like Starscream understood all. A lot of the time it was almost comfortingly scary, but then I would remember why I hated him. He was the cause of all the strife and pain, no matter how small. Every time I thought of anything related to that, I would change the subject, with a sniffle. It wasn't worth fighting with the only being I had left in life. Even if he was the reason for me being alone.

"You have no regret for the pain I am going through?" I asked him, tracing the alphabet into his hand. He answered immediately.

"None."

"Why?" I was shocked. No remorse? I had always thought he must have felt something…

"Because I made my choice." His answer made me look him in the eye. He was emotionless when it came to us humans and the past. I didn't even know how he felt about anything other than Autobots. What did he think of us? Killing us? Changing us? Experimenting on us? What was I to him? Was I just a toy that could be disposed of?

"You do not like us-humans… do you like me? The thing I am…" I didn't want to know the answer. My hand was against my chest, as if it wasn't obvious. If he liked me, wouldn't that make it harder to hate him? What if he hated me? What if he was emotionless to anything that I was? We were living an okay life-style. It was strange and new, but there had been no real arguments and falling outs between us. I understood that Starscream thought differently than us. He didn't care for us. Most of the time, I forgot about that and simply existed. My body taking over and me just kind of auto-piloting. I didn't speak when I simply was alive. Then, there were times like this. Answers like the one Starscream gives me. Or remembering how Starscream could force thoughts into my mind without a moment's hesitation.

"I am pleased with you, yes, but it is true I have no love for what you once were. What you once were has no bearing on what you will become. What you will become is something I will mold. How can I dislike something that I created? The variables with your past are hard to understand-yes- and it becomes worrisome when I do not know your kind as I know my own, but it matters not. You are mine, and I can not hate something that I wrought with my own hands. It would be akin to a metal-smith hating his frying pan for burning him."

"I don't understand." I mumbled, flicking a finger to make a small unnoticed dent. I did though. I understood, but I didn't want it to be real. His hands were scarred, and I didn't know from exactly what. Definitely not from me.

"What do you not understand?" He asked me, running a finger almost lovingly down my head and back. It felt good. Soothing. Prying. Images and thoughts invaded my mind, of calming cybertronia seas, and silent hills made of iron and other unimaginable ores. I didn't realize till later that it was Starscream's way of calming me. Intruding in my mind and planting false images of happiness.

"Me and you. What I am for. Why I'm here. How I'm supposed to continue living." The thoughts of peace and calm came down on me like a sledge hammer. "Love. Hate. Or is it passion? Things I don't want to know about. Things that I want. I want to forget too…"

It was a true statement. How much easier must it be to forget everything? And how easy would it be for the world to forget me as soon as I was gone?

"If you want me to take your memories I will. If it becomes such a distractions that you will not move on, I will remove the memories myself. Against your will. But I warn you, you may not-" He was interrupted by me. I didn't know I had such a force still left within me.

"I may not what? Be the same? I haven't been the same for almost a month!" I sniffled. "I don't want to forget, but at the same time, I do. When I was human, things were cut and dry. Nothing was strange or weird. Now, I don't even know how to look at the world. It's different. It's scary. It's a place I've never heard of, and I want to go back!"

I sat in Starscreams palm, shivering and sniffling. I was whining and groaning my pains to Starscream, the person who caused all of this. Even if I couldn't cry, I could still feel the emotional turmoil that was dragged out of me.

"You can't go back." Starscream whispered into my mind, an almost loving caress that touched me from head to toe. It made me wonder why he was trying so hard to convince me. Couldn't he just re-program me? Or did that not exist? "If you did go back, you would not be accepted. What would _your government_ do to you? Or your family unit?" I shivered, because I knew. It was stupid to think I would get a hero's welcome for escaping. "Here you have everything you need. I will love you, care for you, and treat you as my own- as best I can. How many humans can promise you that? Now? You will not get the same treatment anywhere else. Someone may try. Someone may succeed. But for how long? How will they provide you with what I have? Do you need anything else to survive? I'll give it to you."

I know, even to this day, that Starscream was manipulating my thoughts and feelings to his own. He implanted in me a fear of going anywhere from his side. Yes, he was not overly cruel, but he managed to extrude a presence that scared me just as much as if he was. He shot my self-confidence in the face and danced on its grave, but I could not fault him. Maybe it was something he had done before, and I was told to forget, but I cannot hate him. I want to. God, I want to very badly. I know I wrote a story on such a subject, so I know it is possible he has taken my story to heart. I still cannot hate him. My instinct has nothing to do with this fact. It's just accepted by now. I feel as though I am so far gone…

I was put to sleep not a minute after I was calmed, and then the next day was when Skywarp skipped his little butt into my sleeping quarters, woke me up, and then proceeded to berate me for making Chris cry. As if I didn't feel bad enough, now Skywarp was flouncing in telling me what I could and could not do with Chris. He was fragile, don't hurt him. He was a sibling, treat him better. He threatened me with such a discrete voice I was almost afraid that Starscream had not heard any of the threats laced in.

"I would suggest you stick to the creation I so graciously gave to you and stay away from mine." Starscreams voice was level and deadly. I would gladly call him my mother with how he was acting.

I didn't need to graduate from college to realize a threat from Starscream, even when he didn't disclose the actual threat part. His voice changed to a tone he had never used on me. It was reserved for people who he was pissed at. Skywarp narrowed his eyes, dropped Chris off next to me, and then left with an indignant sweep of his wing. He didn't even bother to make sure I kept good on my end of the 'deal.' He didn't need to worry though. I was better now.

So, when Chris threw the metal ball my way I caught it and tossed it back. Chris was delighted and squealed, got up, and trundled over on unsteady legs to hug me. All was forgiven in his mind. Like a toddler. Even when mine was screaming ' _this isn't right. Never gonna be alright. This isn't right. Never gonna be alright." _

Chris and I talked for a while. Him teaching me basic words he had picked up from Skywarp and me teaching him advanced words I had learned from Starscream. Our relationship was borderline parasitic to each other. You would think we could just download useless information, but we can't. We keep what we need, basic programming and such, and then we toss everything but the things that are vital to our hearts. Everything else has to be memorized and learned. We learn faster, almost ten times as fast, but it is not just downloaded.

Chris has a big stomach, so his is usually when his next feeding is. My Fanfiction authoress lifestyle has led me to greener pastures when food is introduced, namely: I forget to eat. My mind is mostly filled with thoughts of my family and how I miss them, or on the occasional mind slip, how great of a story this is. Starscream had tried time and time again to change my thoughts to something of his own, but my longing could not be contained. Sometimes it feels huge, like a monster wanting to envelope me in a hug.

My family, in my mind, is forever growing weary and weakened. I cannot remember certain family member's faces, laughs, or personalities. The memories are being lumped together until all I can think is that it might have been an aunt or uncle, or even my second youngest brother. I didn't remember who started the food fight on my tenth birthday or even who gave me my first cat, Wendy. Or was it Wizard? I wish the world had a way of reminding me of them, but it does not. I am trapped in a place with such white-wash colors of gray and black that I hardly remember the color of flesh and warmth. My memories of just before my turning are still as fresh as they day I received them.

I'm sad here, and that is certainly something Starscream can't fix by just telling me to suck it up. But that is neither here nor there, those are just my emotions. I'll continue from where I left off.

My second strike came on the third day after I had decided to accept Chris, no matter how brain dead he was. The Seekers had a way of saying what I thought of Chris. It's a keening noise. It means Kin. No hurt. No unnecessary anger. Sharing. So it shouldn't come as a surprise, what happened next. We were being stupid, plucking each other's wirings and seeing what would happen if we strayed too far. It was a game. I was on his arm and he was on my leg. So far, we had only succeeded in making my leg jump once and his arm flop uncontrollably. It was still lots of fun, pulling a wire and looking up into Chris's face to see if it had done anything. The disappointment was almost mirrored on our faces. Then we would both laugh ourselves silly, before proceeding to do it again.

I was curious, and I had taken apart plenty of things before, when I was human, so it only seemed natural to be curious about our bodies. I had stared at my fingers for hours before, so it wasn't really a surprise when Chris and I both poked and prodded each other. Starscream and Skywarp had both rolled their eyes, knowing that it was apparently 'childish sparkling antics.'

How was I supposed to know that Energon veins and wirings were different? I didn't know, and therefore, when I pulled his 'wiring' he froze up and stared at his arm. We both did. It was for a good reason too. His arm was welling blue, green liquid. We both looked into each other's eyes, wide and uncertain before we both called for help. Each of us calling for our creators. I have to admit that when we cry without tears, it pulls at the receptors. We're shrill and we shriek louder than any adult transformer ever could, but that is not the point.

The point was that I was freaking out so badly that my arm was starting to hurt in an almost empathetic pain. So it wasn't a surprise when Starscream came over within the second. We were both too distressed to hear when he said, but he called someone, and then tried to calm Chris and I down by picking us up. I switched back to primitive Cybertronian- **Hick-up-click**. _Fear-confusion-helplessness._ He was very gentle and I held onto his thumb as I tried to stop my own little melt down. I wasn't even the one hurt.

It was a weird feeling, the whole being scared. In this body, I had never experience the fear until that moment. I had been safe, and now it seemed as though that wasn't right. I shivered as imaginary cold fingers pried their way under my armor. I don't know how long it was before Starscream finally got Chris's arm to stop its bleeding. We both were sniffling tiredly by the end of it, though. Chris more so than I.

Then, as if nothing had ever happened, Starscream placed us both down on the table to resume our play. Chris and I, both wide-eyed and terrified, didn't even so much as think about touching each other. We kept our distance until we heard loud clanking of feet and Skywarp burst through the door, frenzied almost. The sight of him made Chris whine to be picked up and comforted by his creator. I remember feeling a bit of disgust. It seemed like just yesterday that Chris and I were both rolling and talking about our human lives. When we were still human ourselves.

That was about the time that Skywarp glared at me. It was a threat in itself. Staring at a sparkling that belonged to another bot. I guess in some cultures it could be considered worse than abuse. I flinched back from the stare and could only watch in horror as he took Chris and left.

"Keep your sparkling under control, Starscream." He spat as the door slid shut inches behind his foot. He got a final word in too. "Or I will."

It didn't register that I was shaking until Starscream picked me up, once again. This time the warmth of Chris was not there as a weight of comfort. I couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing. Starscream's finger pattered down my back as I tried to understand what had just happened. It wasn't every day that I was threatened by one of Starscream's own trine mates. Starscream stared hard at the place where Skywarp had stood only moments before. His eyes bore into the walls as he patted me.

"It was not your fault. Simple curiosity. I've done worse to sparklings when I was as small as you." He sighed, sensing my distress from our bond. The bond itself was strong, and that helped me deal with everything going on. Strength streamed through it in a tidal wave, and I was swept up in it. Feeling comforted by the care Starscream was putting into it. I hid my face in the crook where his thumb met his hand, trying to hide from the world.

"Why is it so hard?" I asked trying, honestly trying, to understand. Skywarp was not the most stable of bots, and I can't say it would be a surprise to be attacked by him, but Chris had no worries of such things. Chris was growing in his strengths and weaknesses and I was stuck in a denial I wasn't aware of. Chris was flourishing while I was being beaten down. Most of that was because I didn't want to accept this existence. This life. I knew that, but I still didn't understand. Understanding was just out of reach.

"It is hard because you have put limitations on yourself." He all but growled to me. His voice was harsh, but I knew in my spark and through my bond that he wasn't angry at me, but angry at my human thoughts stopping me from being who he wanted me to be. A transformer like him. I wonder if this was how surrogate mothers felt. A child not theirs, but forced to take care of it.

"I want it to stop. Not my thoughts exactly… I just want everything to stop being so complicated." My whine was clearly heard in my voice, and I knew that I was being a baby but I didn't care. Chris's state was weighing heavily on me, and I couldn't help but think. Thinking was so treacherous to my mind. Chris. Me. Starscream. We didn't make sense.

I sniffled and Starscream continuously pet my head. The drumming on my head so nice and normal.

"Then stop making it so hard." He whispered, as my mind whirled in confusion. I was making it hard? How was it me? I almost spoke, but Starscream beat me to the punch. "You are not human. Not anymore. You don't want to believe that you have changed, but you have. I can see the change, and so can you. I have given you time to think, but you are not doing it. You are the only one not trying to live this new life. Yes, how you came about it might have been horrible, but it was necessary. And, yes, it may still be appalling, but you will never know unless you try." He stopped to sigh angrily, never ceasing the comforting head petting.

"You will not live unless you start to let go of your expectations of this life."

I wanted so badly to say something snappy, but I couldn't. My mouth was glued shut in shock, as the _truth_ in Starscream's words radiated through every limb of my body, as well as his silent command to listen. _Parental truth was truth to be followed,_ my body told me. Anyone willing to tell me how to think had to be trying in my best interest to save me. I didn't want to believe that, but I knew it was true. Or as true as the truth could be twisted.

"I know, but it is hard." I thought, hearing Starscream stop his petting to turn me to face him.

"I'm not asking you to immediately do it. I am asking you to start trying, because you have not for the three weeks you have started to live." I stayed silent as I started realizing how drowsy I was. The activity of the day had worn me out.

"I'm ordering you to start trying to live. Today." It was one of the last coherent thoughts I had before I fell into sleep. Or recharge. I don't know what I would call it.

The next day was where I started this story. When Starscream and Skywarp started to almost have a fist fight in front of two impressionable human-sparklings. Us. Chris and Me. It started out normal enough, except not normal because of that stupid command Starscream had given me. I had to obey. It was a compulsion. My mind honestly gave its best to think and see things as the transformers do. As Starscream does. As Chris does now.

The world was bleak to my human mind, but to the transformer humming away at the back of my mind, it was home. The dark and dreary landscape was not chaotic, like my human home world, but it had a certain element of surprise. You needed to be careful on earth. Anything could kill a small fleshling. Anything. Falling rocks, panthers, bears, other humans, cars crashing, buildings falling, and even our own bodies betraying us with heart attacks, cancer, and strokes.

I shivered in disgust, before catching myself. Starscream told me to think, and that was what I was doing. I was thinking like a Transformer. I blanched as I tried to remind myself of my origins. It didn't work and I felt myself slip into a thinking so foreign it was like there was another person in my head.

My eyes were opened to the possibilities and I couldn't look away. As soon as I let my mind's barrier fall away, it was like I was in the process of being reborn. Or something was born in me. Everything was different, at first. Things were new and exciting as I tried to let my mind throw away its fleshy observations. Sharp objects could kill. No. They could, but it would not. I was metal, and metal only hurt metal when crafted as such. Fleshlings were scared of metal because they were soft and impressionable. Metal could slice and dice organics without a care and still live.

Then I realized just what I was thinking and had to flinch at my own implications. I was thinking like them, it was only a step back from where Chris was at. I felt like I was trapped inside someone else's body. A serial killer. I was stuck in my musing as Skywarp brought Chris to the table, dropped him, and then walked over to talk to Starscream about our diet or something. We only ate one thing, so the conversation shouldn't last long.

**Chirp click**. Chris was worried.

I looked up to see Chris's bright pink eyes staring into my soul. I was almost positive they had been blue, but I didn't care. They were perfect. His brow was puckered up as he stared at me. Then, he plopped down and started to play with his feet, trying to make them do things they couldn't. It was almost as if the incident yesterday had never happened. His mind was blind to everything as he learned. Only important things were kept, and the unimportant discarded.

"Do you remember?" I asked him, in our own little language. His hands on his feet stopped moving and he looked at me. His stare was piercing for one with little to no processing speed. It only lasted a second, and the brief moment of hope I felt made it all worth it. Then his eyes dimmed and he asked me what I meant. So I rephrased the question. I was being bold. Putting both of our sanity on the line. His because I wasn't sure what would happen if I forced him to remember, and mine because I don't think I could handle the hopeful flitter of my spark.

"Do you remember how you and I got here? When we were soft… Or About the others? Do you remember when we were brought… You were my only friend." My voice was impossibly calm as he and I stared into each other's eyes. His were still bright, but dumb. His face was thoughtful as he tried to continue, but it was not an actual effort. He shook his head, and gripped my hand anyway. He patted it and then told me everything would be alright. He didn't need the memories.

It dawned on me that he thought I was hallucinating, or maybe virus ridden.

"Come on Chris, try to remember." I guess it was more of a plea than anything. Chris's optics had brightened, and he was shivering. I think he thought I was angry. "What about when we were in the cage together?" He stopped me with a touch to my shoulder.

"I do not remember what you want me to. I only know that I was sparked. That's all." His voice was as soft as he could make it. Yes, he was a child in his mind, but we had vocabulary that would challenge even a middle-schooler. I shook my head.

"You were born. We were brought here against our will. Do you honestly not remember? You were human once!" I was shaking at this point, enough that I didn't immediately notice Chris's wide eyes. I never understood how Starscream and Skywarp didn't hear us.

"Human?" He asked, his voice no more than a hum next to the sound of his engine. I couldn't actually be sure he made any noise, I just saw his mouth move. His eyes were impossibly big, his body tensed up as if he was expecting an attack, and his gaze was in the distance. I froze as I heard him say the next sentence.

"I know."

We both sat in silence for a second before he slumped over and fainted. It was such a shock that I eep'ed loud enough to get the attention of the adults. Starscream arrived first to check Chris over, and ask me pointedly- "What happened?"

I could only stare stupidly as Skywarp arrived at the table snarling. Chris wasn't even out for a second before he started moving again and Starscream relaxed slightly. That didn't stop Skywarp from going ballistic.

"What did you do to him this time?" Skywarp's growl was feral and harsh to my ears, and I shivered into the table top. The threatening stance Skywarp was extruding at the moment was scary. I immediately curled into a ball, with my hands covering my head. My fear practically leaked across the bond. I hadn't actually feared for my life since I was successfully turned into my present form, until that moment. Skywarp's wings flared and then shifted suddenly as Starscream grabbed a hold and tugged him away from both of us.

Starscream actually cursed him out in Cybertronia so fast and furiously that I couldn't even try to remember the words for later reference. I was still on my back, staring at the fight that was just about to start.

"Stay away from my sparkling Skywarp." Starscreams own growl sent shivers of anticipation through my body. Chris had woken up by this time and sat with me, staring. "She is not more than a child. Things happen."

"That human-spark should never have been allowed to live!" Skywarp hissed, his wings leveling out as his claws came out. Starscream was still calm, but calculating- and he was royally pissed. Starscream's little presence of reason that was usually hanging around in my head was nowhere to be found, and I had a feeling it was because he didn't want me to feel how deep his anger went for Skywarp at the moment. It wasn't till that moment I realized how much his connection bond with me had kept me grounded. After I found I couldn't find him, I made myself a smaller target and watched as the knock-down drag out fight continued. With shocking results.

"She should be destroyed before she should be allowed to kill my sparkling!" Skywarp's claws reached for Starscream right wing and caught only air. Starscream snarled and knocked his wrist back, making Skywarp stumble as Starscream stepped forward. Stascream's wings flared, probably hoping to intimidate skywarp into submission, but Skywarp only hissed and charged.

"You are the danger, you fragger! Can't you see how you are affecting them? How is this supposed to do any good?-" Starscream was cut off from finishing by Skywarps claws reaching for his face.

"Affecting them? I am protecting what is mine!" The scuffle continued for some time with neither quite gaining the upper hand. Both sides had drawn Energon, and it leaked down Starscreams neck just as it dripped sloppily down Skywarps wing.

"He is not yours. He is mine." Starscream snarled and tripped Skywarp, almost pinning him only to have him attack him viciously with his left leg.

"As long as she is alive, he will not be safe. We have to save the one worth saving!" Skywarp said, stepping back momentarily to let his engine idle before having Starscream answer.

"There is no reason to choose. If you do not stop this nonsense, I will stop you myself." Skywarp snarled at that, and lunged. "Permanently if I must."

"I will destroy her, for all of us." I shivered as Skywarp turned his gaze to me, and started a stumble in my direction. His optics gleamed with the lust of battle, and I couldn't help but cower into the counter top.

A slip of the wrist was all it took to bring him down, in the end. A shocked pair of optics, a bright burst of light and then nothing, followed by a startled grunt of a stopped up voice box. A grab of wings and a quick motion that I could hardly see, and then Skywarp fell. He didn't get up, even as Starscream called a person called Hoist to come and get him. I didn't learn until later that Hoist only took dead bots.

I shivered into Chris as Starscream came to pick us up, the blue staining his hands making me convulse even harder. His hand falter for only a second and then he grabbed both of us, and set me into my box as he tried to calm Chris, who was crying out in pain. At that time, I didn't know what a bond really was. All I knew was that it gave me good feelings when Starscream wished it, and also let me communicate with him. I know now what it really is, but it's still shocking. Without a bond, Chris would die. It was as simple as that. So the solution was simple.

Starscream bonded with Chris.

The terrified shrieks trying to fight death turned into whimpers as I tried to listen to what was going on outside my box. Nothing in my voice would work, and I could only wait in the semi-silence for Chris to come back to me. Starscream's thoughts were still shut against my mind, and I didn't even have the strength to try and push against it. Chris was the main thing now. He did come back. Exhausted. A dead weight in Starscreams arms. But he came back. That's all I really wanted. It's all I could handle after the events that had just transpired.

* * *

Please do review. I feel like a horrible person for asking, but I would like to know what everyone thinks.


	11. Megatron

So this is the next chapter- Much shorter than the last chapter, that is most certainly true.

* * *

**Megatron**

I know I've said that I was not in denial anymore, but I was. This was still a dream to me. I was going to wake up, I assured myself. I assured myself again and again, and again. This was a world that I had wanted to live in. Yes, I missed my mama and my brothers and sisters, but this was the life I had created for myself on …

I just never realized being an accomplice to the murder of my only friend's parental figure would be part of the bargain. Never would have really. I don't like to remember the details of those few moments, when Chris couldn't breathe because the shock on his system was too much to bear. Or when Starscream didn't even blink as the huge hunk of metal named Hoist grabbed up Skywarp and dragged him off like he was an over-sized tuna. Or when Chris was forced to bond his over exerted systems with Starscream's, just to save his own life. Because, another fun fact, if a sparkling does not have a parent, it will die. Ha, I understand why we are so… protected now.

I found myself in the box. Sitting. You should all know which box I'm talking about by now. Chris was sleeping curled up tightly next to me. Or, well, not exactly sleeping- more of a forced recharge. Something like Stasis lock. (Yeah, that's real guys. And way more serious than I thought… It's kind of like a minor Coma, practically medically induced.) His dreams full of things I couldn't comprehend. The room was singing it's warmth to my body, but I refused to sleep. My mind was still on over drive to understand everything that had just happened.

After the whole fiasco, Starscream had thrown us in the box and then left the lab. I think he might have given me some mental reassurance before leaving, but I could not get past the fact that he left me. I never actually saw Starscream leave, but now that it was a concrete fact, I didn't feel any better about it. I wanted to sleep. Oh, boy did I ever, but I couldn't do it. My body cried from exhaustion, as my processor cried in the agony of losing my sanity. I felt it only right that on the same day I assisted in the killing of a giant alien that I developed a sleeping disorder. Can mechs and femmes get sleeping disorders? I don't know, I just know sleep has never been as easy as before.

So I sat in that warm, dark little cage, waiting for the world to start making sense. To this day I can say it has failed miserably in the only task I expect from it. Chris's little body hardly moved as he lay immobile. My fingers petted his helmet as I kept my eyes shut for fear of what I might find outside of my closed optics.

Transformer lingo was coming easily to my mind. Maybe something like mitosis. Starscream's knowledge was slowly leaking into my head. Kind of like news print on a newspaper getting wet and becoming one sloppy mess. I may have written it in stories, but it is another thing to actually start to think of body parts like that. Optics, Olfactory sensors, Audio components. I don't know the word for our mouths yet, but it is probably equally alien. Maybe aural unit?

"What am I?" I asked myself, as my digits slid up and down Chris's body. He didn't even flinch or purr, like he usually did.

What purpose will I serve in the future? In a thousand years? In only two? So far all I had accomplished with my surrogate parent was killing somebody and talk about brain washing, and the ethics involved in both crimes. My life hadn't amounted to much in my short seventeen years of being a human, but at least I had had hope that it would. I wanted to cry. Not just for my lost life, but for my family's life, and the world's life. What was their fate?

How had I fallen so far, so fast? I had once been a good girl. A's, the occasional B, I was on the honor roll. 'Drugs' were a spoon full of suger or the bane of my existence. My brothers were my worst problems. My hair turning gray was all I had to look forward to. Now? I can say I've assisted in killing someone, learned how to effectively brain wash somebody, talk in Cybertronian, and I can also say that my future has no concrete base. I may be a toaster someday. A. Toaster. How was that for a life?

In case you haven't guessed, the **killing** of someone so brutally and calmly in front of me had rattled my processor beyond compare. That was my creator, showing me what I had to look forward to in training, in life. I thought training would be a little hand to hand combat, then maybe I could run away to join a rag-tag band of bots somewhere in space. Or maybe I could plead with the government to take me in. They wouldn't be able to protect me, granted, but the illusion of protection was all I asked for. If you could see me now, you would see me snorting. Do you think my future looks bleak yet? I was certain that I was going to be trained to start assassinating people, or bots, or whatever.

I wasn't scared of what starscream would teach me. I can say no to knowledge. No…. I was afraid that I would become like Starscream. Ruthless. Intelligently so. What did it take to get to that point? Losing everything only to have some part of it brought back by your captor?

By the time Starscream came back, the warmth in the small cell had lulled me into a not-so watchful awareness. My hand felt heavy against Chris's shoulder as I slumped against it, just 'resting'. Starscream's shadow fell across the cube and awoke me without a single word spoken. Then, he scooped me up and took me outside of the doors. Chris didn't move at all.

I was dazed at first, but didn't dare complain. Something in Starscream's optic told me the questions wouldn't be welcome. His fingers were curled protectively against my sides, and I could only peer out of the slots left between digits. His link to my mind was blocked and empty.

"Megatron wants to meet you, and understand why I had to kill his second best flier." I guess the questions floating around in my mind were already answered. I only looked to him for a second, and then I continued observing the places I was going. I hadn't left that room in so long, it hardly felt fair that we were going so fast.

"This meeting was reserved for a better time, but even I can see the need to show you to him. Besides, you do not have Chris's 'disorder.' You are a clean experiment. He will see the error of Skywarp's ways."

Starscream wasn't in the mood for dissidence, especially from me, so I let him vent about Skywarp. I learned that something had always been wrong with him. He wasn't right in the head. Never had been, never would be. He was a loose cannon, made so by the ability to move space and time to his will. Starscream just managed to silence him before he blew. As far as I was concerned, he blew long before he was killed.

My systems chilled as we walked farther into the base. Starscream quieted. If I didn't know better, I would say we were going somewhere evil. It felt wrong to be down here, but Starscream didn't stop once. His strong bowed legs carried him and myself down the long hallway to who knows where. I even tried to push myself into his thoughts to try and get him to stop or talk to me, but it was ultimately a failure.

He did pet me once as he walked, for some reason not trying too hard to comfort me. Maybe something about Megatron really was scary. If Starscream, my protector, would bow to someone, he had to be strong. Right? Starscream was the strongest bot I knew… That other stronger strength scared me. Greatly.

The silence was waved away by the hum of a generator, gigantic if I had any say about it. My little spark thrummed as I listened, for the first time trying to calm myself down from the fear of the unknown. The darkness of the surrounding area reminded me of when I had been human, and in the cage. The blackness had eaten nights of good sleep as easily as I had eaten pudding.

Now, originally I had thought that Megatron's room or chamber, or whatever, would be highly impressive. I can say I was a little shocked when all we did was enter a room and see him standing by a rather impressive holo-map of earth, discussing battle plans with at least five different generals. I didn't know they were generals at the time… Very interesting conversation, that it was.

Megatron looked up to see Starscream, and then glanced down to see little old me. I clenched my hands together in a kind of makeshift two-fist-hand, trying to squeeze the life out of each of them. Megatron smirked, showing oddly human looking teeth with razor sharp edges. I gulped as Starscream started walking forward and Megatron sent the other bots in the room off to do goodness-knows what. Though he didn't speak, just waved his hand at them and they almost _jogged _to obey.

"Well, well, well. So this is the human? Hmm. Large for the age you say she is close to. I must say she is quite extraordinary. Come closer. I want to have a look at the sparkling that cost me a_ warrior_." Megatron spoke in a tone not becoming of an evil-overlord bend on killing humanity and defeating the Autobots. His voice was strong, yes, but there was an almost regal-too-good-to-talk-like-an-invalid sort of tone. I felt like I was standing in front of royalty. It was better-than-thou, but the sound was also curious. Honest to God curious- about me.

Starscream wasted no time in walking forward. Megatron even held out his hand for me, and I was shocked as Starscream gave me over with no hesitation or faltering in his hand. I did not fall into Megatron's hand, but rather was scooted out of his palm like he might with an organic he actually cared about. After an indignant squeak, I looked up to see Megatron's face becoming bigger as he brought his hand in front of himself.

I wanted to huddle into a corner, but I felt a reassuring push of courage from Starscream that almost startled me. Though, when I looked into Megatron's eyes, I didn't have as much fear as before. This, in itself was unbecoming of a human who should be scared shitless.

"She is strong." Megatron murmured, as he lifted his other hand to slowly stroke my helm. I didn't want to, believe me, but I let out the smallest purr. Starscream's hands were heavenly, but Megatron's hands were comfortable also, just in a different way. And just to defend myself here, you have never been a sparkling. I swear I've never been this sensitive in my whole life… "And you say she still has all her human traits? I assume this means she wants to be loyal to _them_ then, correct?"

He never stopped petting my head, but I didn't mind. It made my thoughts all crumbly. Easy. It made me wonder why Megatron was supposedly so scary… He was being nice. Then again, I knew that could change faster than pissing off a rattle snake.

"I would say yes, if none of the others survived, but Chris, the one who was rebuilt, is nearer than kin to her now. They are very close. I doubt she would be able to betray him without him betraying her. Personally, I don't ever see that happening." Megatrton snorted as Starscream defended me. It was true what was being spoken about. Given the chance I would run. Just, now that I had Chris to think about, and he being little use as an escape-partner, I would have to rethink my strategy. Frankly, a lot.

"So, you are saying she can be taught?" Megatron asked, moving his finger to my back. Up and down. Soothing. Damnit. I wanted to be pissed, but my little body wouldn't allow me. _Besides, Megatron wasn't that bad_, my mind whisper to me.

"I am saying, humans can be swayed. Plus, she is tied directly to me, and I don't have any inclination to just let her go. She is mine, as far as I can see-she knows that." Megatron thought about this statement for a moment, but I didn't really notice. I mean, I guess I should have been mad at Starscream for stating such a thing, as though I was only an object. I wasn't though. Then again, I was kind of brain-dead by the time I tried to think of anything to say. In my defense, again, you have never been petted as a sparkling. Seriously, everything is magic. So I listened and tried not to really get angry that they were talking about me, right above me…

"How is her transition going?" No unsettling movements.

"She is… fighting it, but losing. She is starting to listen, though. I've managed to convince her to try."

"What does _listening_ entail?"

"Arguing and losing. Losing on her end. She just has to let go of her humanity and things will go just fine."

There was a slight pause, and then Megatron stopped petting me. I looked up as he started talking.

"What do you think…-" He stumbled for a moment, looking at Starscream for information.

"-Jessica –" The assistance came a little faster than I thought.

"Jessica?"

I was shocked as I was finally asked a question. And he was using my name… no matter how strange it sounded in transit. My mind kind of blanked before I answered as honestly as I could. What was he asking? Am I good? Do I try and listen to Starscream?

"I try."

"Ah. So you try and be good? Or, do you try and win these arguments with Starscream?"

"I try to be… me. Winning against Starscream isn't going to happen any time soon, so I give in. It's easier." Starscream smirked, that smile that is so jack-ass I can't help but say, "What would you do in my position?" My gut was telling me to act like a teenager and be moody, but I stopped myself. Wasn't I an adult- Well, as a human? I needed to act like it. How would I be an ambassador to Earth if I was always being mushy-brained…

Silence reigned for all of seven seconds, before Megatron laughed. The patting had gone and now his hand was shaking up and down, and I had to hold on to his thumb as he snorted. It took a few more gigantic shakes before he stopped to gasp air into his engine. It revved in amusement.

"I like her." He gauffed again. An almost kindness touching his voice. "Skywarps death is still a blow, but I can accept her as a replacement… when she is ready." You know, looking back on that, I should have been aware just what that entitled me to. Namely- Decepticon. Namely- never getting away.

"Of course, Megatron."

"I want weekly progress reports." Megatron stated as he started to hand me over to Starscream, whose waiting hands were all too willing to get me back into the safety of their owners mind. Starscream mentally cooed at me in the baby language, muddling my thoughts with praise. I couldn't help but smile. This trip to meet Megatron hadn't gone anything like I thought it would. I mean, nobody died (well, during the meeting), nobody was snide, nobody was forced to snivel and bow down… And he petted me.

What else had I been lied to about? Megatron was not the evil overlord I had been told about. If anything, he was almost an Optimus Prime. Yes, he kind of reminded me of Starscream in the 'I'm-gonna-tell-you-what-to-do-and-you're-gonna-do-it' group, but he was a leader. He was smart. Maybe I hadn't been lied to….

"Also, Starscream-" Starscream looked up, not stopping his mental cooing and praise, "I want a proper name for her. I don't particularly care if it is part of her human name… but Jessica is too human. Very weak. It is not becoming of a Decepticon. Understand?"

Starscream nodded smiling, obviously unshaken by the tone that sounded like a threat, "Yes sir."

"Good. Now. Go, I have work to do." And that was the end of it. Or well… Close to it. Starscream had apparently already picked out my name. Or well, he gave me a choice.

Screech or Metal.

I didn't need any reminders of my life before, so I jumped on Screech faster than I had ever thought possible. I didn't quite realize that having a name like that would give me hell for my whole life. I mean, literally, Screech.

It almost sounded like I was stuck in a bad sitcom, and I hadn't even met barricade, **yet.**

* * *

**Reviews are lovely. I love hearing what people have to say.  
**


	12. A Difference

Hello you guys. Sorry for such a late update. This thing has been ready for about a week, but I was not feeling well. I guess the closest thing to call my 'sickness' would be a virus mixed with a cold. For a giant body made entirely of metal, or whatever I'm made of, that pretty much meant that I had hot flashes and cold flashes and I was running as if everything was slowing down. I'd lose track of days from recharge alone... But I am fine now. So I hope you enjoy. This is one of the more interesting events of my Youngling life.

Here you are.

* * *

**A Difference**

So between then and the next month, literally nothing happened. I mean, I'm in a compound with Decepticons, I have Starscream for a surrogate-paternal thingy, and Chris is brain washed daily. Nothing happened otherwise. That's all normal stuff. I know, _I_ was expecting something, anything to happen, but nothing ever did. Chris ended up getting some mind-work done, enough that he remember me, but couldn't figure out who in the world this 'skywarp' guy was that we kept mentioning. Or well, I kept mentioning. Slip of the tongue and all that… I was controlling myself more though… It was for his own 'good.' I refused to cry over spilled milk. So. I didn't cry at that.

Well, I guess I cried once. Not really cried, more liked just shrieked for a little bit which is the closest thing we have for feeling emotional pain and releasing it. It had been a day when Chris had said something so alien, followed it with an action so deep and mysterious that I literally couldn't take it anymore. I waited for Chris to leave before absolutely freaking. Starscream was the only one in the room, and he comforted me in the only way he knew how; petting my back as though I was an upset kitten. Which I guess, made the most sense.

Something did actually happened though. At the very end of the month, Starscream gave us our daily look overs, and tapped my chest. This was a usual procedure. The sound that resounded was not. An unusual dull thunking came back and Starscream gave me a little purr of what I now called 'Starscream's pleased sound.' Chris and I shared a look, and Starscream caressed my mind before explaining. It scared me. I thought for a second he was going to tell me I was pregnant with some weird alien baby. The reality was nicer. Ish.

"It's time for your upgrade."

Chris and I nodded, and I remembered faintly something about that. An upgrade on me. My body. Definitely not pregnancy.

"You do remember me talking about that, right?" My mind blanked on me for a moment. "When your spark gets too big for your body and we have to move it?" I think he felt my skeptical vibes, more than he saw my face drop at any mention of surgery-Sore subject and what-not that it is- Starscream mentally calmed me, forcefully. "You won't feel a thing. You'll recharge, and wake up taller, in essence. And a few more traits will be added, too."

"What other traits?" I asked, hesitantly. He looked at me in the eyes and just smiled. I got a little uneasy. Starscream smiling is usually a good thing because it means that he is in a good mood… Just not when I'm about to go under the knife. Then again, Starscream was probably not going to tell me what was going on unless I pleaded, so I pushed my curiosity into his mind through our link that was slowly _just becoming_ a way of life. He had turned to look at Chris, getting ready to tap him on the chest as well, when he responded back. Starscream neither hesitate in his movements nor his speech pattern as he started to converse with me. Something I found highly amazing, because his hands did their work while his mind communicated.

"_I won't tell." _He told me, flat out._ "It is a tradition for younglings to not know what their bodies will look like. Something that used to spice up the hum-drum life on Cybertron. So the answer to your unabashed pleading is: No." _ He scanned Chris while talking, and ended up poking him and getting a similar sound to my own. With a smile, he told Chris he was going to be upgraded, too. Chris's reaction was much _happier_ than mine. Those little flaps that looked like ears, but were not, flipped and fluttered next to his skull. He actually smiled and clapped his hands, asking a hundred and ten questions about the procedure. Smartish quesionts. A question that he didn't understand, but was still excited at the prospect of change was simply just Chris.

I didn't listen to any of his questions, because I was lost in my own thoughts, for like, the eighteenth time that day. Whenever I could get away with it, namely when Chris wasn't grabbing my full attention or I was able to really think about how messed up my world was. I mean, a month had gone past since I had seen someone killed by the only bot in my life who I couldn't help but love. I guess I had become complacent.

How was I okay with this?

I watched as Chris argued with Starscream about something trivial like why we had to eat that green-blue swirling liquid. His argument had something to do with solar power not being a very efficient way to live, except in a life or death situation. This didn't even surprise me anymore. Hum-drum life was slowly turning into something supposedly extraordinary. People had died a while ago… A lot of people… And I hadn't even thought about them for a few weeks. A few months if I was being honest to myself. What was my world coming to?

Starscreams presence immediately came to my 'rescue'. He sent some of the most calming messages across the little bond we shared, that was (unsurprisingly) getting larger and stronger every day. I knew severing it would kill me, so I had to keep it. Is it wrong that I continued to culture it anyway instead of at least keeping it minimum, when I had the chance to just die? Starscream's mind was like a drug. Starscream was a drug. I was addicted. Does that make me a bad person? The comfort I was receiving immediately killed any doubtful thoughts in my mind. Was it bad that I received comfort from my captor? Yeah. Sign me up for Stockholm Syndrome 101.

"_Now, now. You're thinking like a human again. The past is the past." _ I mentally nodded. After a while, this logic had started making more and more sense. I did start seeing things in a new light. Decepticons weren't the bad people everyone made them out to be. Yes, they were in a war, but how does that make them bad? They do what they have to, to **survive**. Survival is all that matters. Kin, survival, continuation of the fight. I can't even blame myself for thinking that this thought process is wrong _or _right. I mean, as long as Chris had chosen his side of the war I had to be able to at least try and support him, even though he doesn't remember me like I remember him.

Chris is still as excited as ever as Starscream picks me and him up, and begins to walk. I didn't realize that our surgery was going to be right then. That my life was going to be changing again so soon. My spark warmed a little in my chest as my anxiety grew. This was really happening. I was letting this happen. I was sitting here, letting Starscream do whatever he wanted. I was being carried away.

I was letting this all happen.

And you want to know what I did? I sat in Starscream's palm, like a good little sparkling, ready to do whatever he wanted.

Why?

Because, little known fact, I can't do **a single thing** to stop it.

I'm a child to Starscream. 'Child' is a loose term, and so is 'to' but I know that my bond and my memories are not exactly going to let me off the hook with a snap of my fingers. Starscream could do whatever he wanted, and I couldn't stop him. I'm weak, but I'm safe. All I have to do to stay safe is listen to whatever Starscream tells me to do. Listen to the whispers that slowly change my thoughts into something Starscream can work with.

So, if Starscream says, "Tell Chris everything is alright." When clearly- shit is going to hit the fan and I disagree immensely with his methods, I do it. **I. Do. It.** Not a little person in my mind, telling me to start acting like a robot. Not my father, who I cannot even remember. Nor my thoughts from the past.

Me. Not my mother who sometimes stars in my dreams, or my brothers who star in my nightmares.

Me. This is all me. This is my life and I am finally starting to accept responsibility for it. I am doing what I have to, to get me and Chris through this whole situation alive, because living only to die is not my goal. Living to live, is my goal. If I am a coward for wanting to live for as long as I can with Chris at my side, then yes I accept the title…

I accept it happily.

So I guess, in essence, I lied. A lot has happened in that month that I decided to skip over. Honestly though? Nothing has happened. Everything and nothing have happened simultaneous. I have changed my mind about certain things, but I have never done anything life altering. I still believe in God, my name is Jessica, and if I had taste buds, I was sure I would be addicted to chocolate. Then again, there is something that is always changing. That is all Starscream.

"This is going to be good for you." Starscream told Chris, snapping me out of my own little argument with myself. Chris sat with rapt attention turned towards Starscream, listening as if his life depended on it. Only, it really did. Starscream was efficient, but I was nervous because I had no idea what was going to be happening to us. Change was the only constant variable in our pathetically small lives at the moment. I hated that fact.

We walked into a room I had never seen before, which was not a surprise, considering that I had only been in two or three rooms. It had a huge table, with a smaller almost trolley looking cart by its side, and in the corner there were two little bodies, bigger than me or Chris combined. My throat constricted as I watched our impending fate stare us right in the eyes almost as if to say, "Hello. Is it that time of the month already?"

Both body frames were completely different, except for the fact that they were both grey and lifeless. One had wings, and looked considerably lighter, and the other was bulky, with almost no features except for a face plate which showed only small slits for eyes. I knew which one was for me. Starscream had practically imprinted the image in my mind. I had accepted the image a long time ago, and I had no qualms that Chris was going through the same thing. His eyes were drawn to the bulky frame, already ideas twirling together of what that meant.

The smaller, lighter, and lithe frame was mine. I could tell. Those wings spoke to a special part of my soul. I shivered at that because I felt the wings of change once against grace my thoughts.

"I won't change, will I?" I asked Starscream hesitantly as he let me hop off his hand and onto the table. I didn't mean in physical shape, that would be a dumb question, but in my head. He had promised I could keep my mind intact, but I wasn't sure if he would double-cross me. It would be simple to just take away my mind and turn it to a much humbler and pliable blob. Then again, I wouldn't have remembered if he did. The beauty of mind-manipulation is astounding. Just like its absolute ugliness is terrifying.

"Your mind will not be touched." Starscream promised me, giving Chris a little pat on his head before putting him down next to me. Chris looked at me funny, as if the thought that Starscream could mess with our bodies and minds at the same time was just a fairytale. He shrugged after a moment and told me everything would be 'just fine,' if I would stop 'thinking all the time'. I snorted. The only reason I remained the way I was, was because I thought all the time. I almost felt insulted that he considered thinking a lower form of life. Then again, this was Chris.

Poor, blindly naïve Chris.

"Now, who wants to go first?" Starscream asked, in a falsely 'comforting' voice. Chris immediately shouted 'me, me, me!' into my audio receptor, or ear. I rubbed the offended appendage softly, looking to Starscream so he would shut him up. With a smile and a flourish, he snatched Chris up and did a little trick with his hand that wasn't holding Chris. My spark stopped its activity as Chris's arm was met with a rather small, but lethal looking needle. My fear of needles had not dwindled in strength. The way Starscream stopped Chris from actively freaking out was first by distraction, and then jabbing forward before Chris could even comprehend what was going on.

The knock-out chemical worked like Chloroform to humans. Maybe four times as fast though.

That was the moment I started to worry, and do that oh-so dangerous habit I did: thinking. I tried second guessing everything I could that would possibly save me from this estranged fate. Starscream, never stopping from his work, which I couldn't quite see at another table, actively pushed thoughts of warmth and ease into my mind. Where did that table come from again? Why was I agitated? My mind was leaking fluffy happiness as Starscream worked, and I really couldn't help but act like a true sparkling.

I curled up and waited for Starscream to turn to me.

You've never had your mind melted like Starscream can do to me. I guess, the only way I can describe the way Starscream blanks my mind out, as putting a bar of chocolate on the stove, over some boiling water. It will stay hard, but when it melts, you can do literally anything with it. Then it hardens all over again, and you're left with your creation. Picture me as the chocolate, and Starscream as the chief boiling me down to my rawest elements. Namely, feeling and sensation: Feelings of pure bliss, called cloud-nine, and sensations of warmth and comfort. You couldn't get a fake emotion over the bond, if you tried, so my body took Starscream's happiness and comforting waves as real, heartfelt amnesty for my poor broken thoughts.

That was how Starscream controlled me when I started to think out.

Let me tell you how well it works: I woke up, goodness knows how much later, to a whole new outlook on the world and a vision that was startlingly red.

I guess somewhere between feeling amazing and having a panic attack, Starscream finished up with Chris and put me under. I really can't be surprised, because he told me this operation had to be done, no matter what happened to us. With a sigh, I lay on the comfortably warm surface, trying to get my bearings.

I guess there was not much of a difference. Red hazy outlook on life and all, it wasn't a huge leap from Sparkling-hood to semi-youngling-hood. Well, everything was almost the same, except for the fact that I could feel myself being annoyed with Starscream. Now, there was a shocker. For the past month and some, I couldn't feel the least bit of negative emotion towards Starscream. Yes, I could feel anxiety over the situation, but never towards Starscream. Now, I could. It just wasn't the emotions I had thought would come out, is all.

Relief, anxiety, annoyed, and pleased. Why was I feeling, even the slightest bit pleased?

I realized a moment later that now I could hear Chris inside my mind, too. My feelings and emotions felt trivial after that. The information strolling through his little unkept mind went a little something like this: _Oh, fingers. When did I have four? Have I always had four? I feel hungry… If I eat too much, will I explode? If I explode will I __**die**__? Oh gosh, I __**don't want to die**__-_

The fact that he was in my mind threw me for a loop, and I thought to myself: _Well isn't this just spiffy. _I didn't expect a response, especially from Chris.

_Jess-Screech? Where are you? How do you feel? Isn't it great! My mind is all clear and fluffy. _I got the distinct impression that he was smiling his huge smile, and reaching out like a child to touch his toes. My mind blanked for another second as I finally got that I was talking to Chris, mind to mind, like I'd done with only Starscream. A flare of jealousy was what I felt next, followed closely by confusion.

_What?_

_What was that?_

I shook my head like a dog might to loose water from its fur. The main-cortex of my mind jumbled around as if it was not connected by cables and such. Everything was now becoming fuzzy, like Chris had described. Fuzzy Happy. Why was this happening now? I had been awake for at least a minute or two, my mind was confused as to why. Then Starscream managed to weasel his way into my mind, also taking up a space juxtaposition to Chris, who was still babbling nonsense. I didn't realize he was even standing next to me.

"_It is normal. Relax Screech. It's all of the new programming in your mind, trying to connect itself to your consciousness." _Starscream tapped my head lightly with his forefinger. He was way too happy. _"It is the most normal thing you could be going through at the moment. I would say it is liken to your human 'puberty', or 'coming of age,' or whatever other nonsense." _

It was getting warmer, and fuzzy, and I couldn't quite concentrate, but I didn't want to fall asleep. In fact, I didn't feel tired just comfortable. If this was the robot equivalent to puberty, it sure felt a lot better than the human side. Then again, going through any kind of puberty over again was not on my list of things to do. No matter how metal I was at its timing.

Chris seemed to think is was cooler than sliced bread though. He was sitting on the table, not too terribly far from me, staring at his feet and poking at his internal wirings. Sometimes I wondered if our short-alien childhood was really all he had to go on… Now, watching him try and stuff his fist through his other fist, I could tell you straight forward that yes, it absolutely was. In his mind, anyway.

"Why do I feel… lighter?" I asked Starscream, noticing over the last four minutes that I had progressively felt less heavy than what I went to sleep as. I hadn't really looked over my body, so when Starscream lightly patted an appendage I didn't even know was attached to my body, I stiffened. It was my back… but almost as sensitive as my fingertips. The shock in my system only heightened as I turned around to look at my wings.

Wings.

… One wing. Two wings. Plural. How did I not faint?

"You are like me." Starscream purred into my mind, imposing on my consciousness the very thought of weightlessness, but total power over the situation. Flight. "I'll be teaching you that soon." He must have heard my unconscious discovery, because the whisper through my mind was even more seductive than the last one. More controlling. And God help me if I decided I didn't want this. Denial, I could handle. Stepping off a ledge, and knowing I wasn't going to die? That was going to be the part I had to deal with.

When did denial become the easiest part to deal with in life?

"Don't put that in your mouth, Torn." Starscream reprimanded sharply. I was pulled out of my denial to stare at Starscream. Who was Torn? I looked at what he was looking at. Chris was sitting there, slowly taking his fist out of his mouth.

Oh… He got a new name too, along with the new body. Same as me. That should have been less of a shock, but it was the biggest hit to my system yet. Chris was just… Chris. How did he change to Torn? Or Shorn, or whatever his name was now…

It hit me like a black hole hit a galaxy, sucking everything positive and negative into a giant hole, and smashing it all together. I think all of it was dispersed, but the particles and materials changed, sometimes unrecognizable. That was how I felt. Everything, positive and negative that I knew about Chris was now gone, and in its place was the disbelief that this had all happened in the span of two months.

It wasn't fair to Chri-Torn. Me, being all angry and judgmental. Brainwashing. Being happy. I had been angry at him for _so long_ for leaving me here. All by myself with a stranger who took his body that I couldn't see that my Chris, sweet and human, was no longer there. How I hadn't let him go at the right time, because I was the one needing him. Selfishly holding onto his form in my mind, and superimposing my image of him all over his self that I couldn't see the growth of him. No matter how small it was. Couldn't see over the image of Chris beaten and broken, but laughing in the cage about a party he was missing.

Images of a man who was dead.

I felt disgusted with myself. I had been practically judging _a baby_. Who does that? That wasn't fair to me or to him. Again, with the me. Selfish little me. It was not fair to him.

I guess that was the moment I realized I was going to support him. No matter what: No matter how dumb he turned out to be, or how smart, or how Decepticon, or how beautiful, or how lonely, or how savvy, or how alien. My goodness, I had been sitting here with him, the one who had not even tried to judge me, and I had been judging him.

I felt horrible.

Now as I looked at him, and he was acting the part of a child who only wanted to learn about the world I felt like the horrible step-sister. For what reason? Jealousy. Why? Memories. How long do I hold on until I let go? I realized I was a horrible person. All it took was Starscream telling Ch-Torn not to put a fist in his mouth to realize that…

"Screech, come over here. I would like to give you a check-up…" I didn't hear the first part, trying to mull over everything currently on my mind. Then he spoke inside my mind, with a very convincing presence that I couldn't help but look up at him. "Screech."

The boot-up of my mind took only half a second. When my thoughts caught up with my body, I hopped up and walked over to Starscream, unsteadily. He looked smaller, meaning I must have gotten bigger. How much so, though? Chris looked about the same size… Meaning he had not only changed in looks but in body. He touched my mind hesitantly, recognizing at the same time as me that we could also talk. Like Starscream talked with us.

Now, Chris's touch was so light, I almost didn't know it was there, except for the fact that I had felt nothing before, and this was definitely _not it_. Peeking over at Chris as I walked to Starscream, he waved as he was seated, giving my mind a hug mental hug. Warmth spread through my mind like a wash of relief. I almost fell over from the strength behind that one hidden message. Support.

Goodness. He was too sweet for words…

Starscream held out his hand like old times. When I reached it, we both found the problem with the situation immediately. I would fit in his hand, but that was it. I was as big as his hand, actually quite a size-level greater. It only took me a moment to realize, it would take at least two hands to lift me… or his shoulder.

Starscream gave me his classic smirk, and then held out two hands. As I stepped on them, he gave me a boost to his right shoulder. It was almost instinctual how I twisted and sat down, almost as fluent as a native speaking their God-given language, except this was all about body language. Beneath me, Starscream absolutely radiated smugness. I wondered how it must feel to successfully produce two sparklings, when there had been none for … a long time. I was positive that that would go down in their history.

I would go down in history.

Somehow, I knew I should have been feeling some kind of disturbance, but I was a little too lost in my body to care. Starscream walked down hallway after hallway, winding and twisting through levels and levels of floors. We just kept going up. I had been working my body for the better part of the trip, but when I finally realized that I could actually **see** natural earth light streaming in from horribly constructed windows- I held my breath. I hadn't realized we had walked so far away from Chris.

The light was so clean compared to the ugly almost fluorescent chandeliers that had occupied the ceiling. My mouth dropped open as we entered a hanger. The floor and ceiling were concrete, with pillars supporting each other, but the walls were glass. It must have been alien glass, because I had never seen something so strong and clear in my whole life. The sunlight reached Starscream the moment he stepped into it, and in turn it warmed my very spark.

This, was what I had been waiting for.

But, wait. Wasn't there supposed to be a check-up?

I looked at Starscream and prodded his mind for the answer briefly, before going back to stare as he walked closer and closer to the walls of light and reality I had missed for so long. How to explain the feeling of sunlight after being in the dark for so long? It was like… I had lost my way, and that way had been good and well-meaning, but I had gotten lost. Then, when I found it again, it was all meaningful, and powerful. The very warmth and clarity of it all sucked me in like a vacuum. As if everything was going to be wonderful and good. Nothing could hurt me.

"This is the examination." Starscream spoke quietly as he set me on the ground. The ground rose to meet me and I ran to meet the glass. It was comfortable on my hands, when I knew it should have been hot. I was momentarily blinded by the pleasure and daylight. "I'm going to teach you how to fly."

My spark skipped and flared. I looked at him, restraining myself from beating the glass so I could escape to where I belong. Outside. Starscream smiled sweetly at me. Not harsh, or lying, or power-hungry, or shit-eating. He was genuinely happy with me. He was going to teach me about his favorite thing in the universe. Flight.

"How?" Was all I could think to ask.

"You have watched fledglings being pushed from the ledge, so to speak, yes?"

I nodded, watching him carefully hoping he did not decided that was how he was going to teach me. Pushing me off a ledge. I would go down in the history logs as the stupidest fledgling in the world.

"I'm going to start you small. From my shoulder to the ground first, then from the top of the building to the ground. Then, if you are ready, we will start exercising your body for long periods of flight."

From his shoulder. I looked from the spot I had sat to the ground at my feet. It looked like a humongo-gungo gap. No matter how good the sun felt on my back, I knew I would have to have a little courage to actually get to feel it. Not behind some glass force-field. Not captive.

Free.

That was a word more beautiful than all of the rainbows in the world.

"Okay. How do I do it?"

* * *

I hope you enjoyed. Hopefully, I will not being getting sick this week and I will have the next chapter up.

Don't forget to review!


	13. One More Time

So _hello_,

Once again. This little chapter/excerpt thing is small, but I needed to get something out. It's gotten hectic here. I don't know for how long... I mean, I guess a few months by this point. Met the Autobots... Like, really met them. Not all they are chalked up to be, honestly. Just another side of the war.

Starscream was pissed. Barricade won't let us out of his sight. I haven't seen hide nor hair of Megatron.

I want to go back to a time where **this** happened more often. What you're about to read. I guess that's why I'm posting it. Wishful thinking.

But I don't have the time for such... freedoms.

Soo, Uhm. Enjoy?

* * *

**One more time**

"You want to feel the wind, the currents, and the pockets. It's like a map. Predictable at times, and then unpredictable the next second." I nodded impatiently. He had already explained the history of his people and flight. Interesting as it was, I don't want to write it down unless he holds a gun to my head and forces me to do it. "So, when you glide, what is the first thing to remember?"

"Don't flap." I answered solemnly.

"And?"

"Uhm, Don't make unnecessary movements."

It took an intense scrutiny, a minute of silence to see if I was patient enough, and the little lift to his shoulder.

The ground had never looked so far away.

I gulped as Starscream waited tolerantly for me to come to senses with my wings. Which, hung on my back like a huge lead weight. I was clumsy with them, and they seemed in the way. With a twitch of my back, my wings sprang to liveliness. Not like an _"on/off "_ switch, more of another person attached to my back dictating everything that would come with the package known as 'wings.'

Though there was no wind in this hanger, my newly appreciated appendages grasped at the air as if they had been under water for long periods of time. Every little sensory and node in my wings flared to life, and I couldn't help but gasp. It was like waking up a sleeping arm or leg. The pins and needles traveled all over the sensitive wiring and complex plating. By the time I was ready to jump, I was ready to live.

It didn't look as scary, now with my wings whispering sweet knowledge into my head. I was scared to jump. Anyone in their right mind would be terrified their first time. If you're not, then you had best be getting out. The ground seemed to loom at me, glaring and snarling at me like a beast from BeoWulf.

Starscream gave me the dimensions of the glide, but I didn't need it, because my wings had already properly adjusted my body for takeoff. I felt like they had a mind of their own. Even though the data was endlessly pouring into my skull, giving me a head ache, my wings and body were synched. For probably the first time in a long time, some part of my body finally was.

Starscream stiffened as he felt me coil to jump. This was the moment.

This was the moment I really stopped being human.

So, with that thought in mind, I did jump.

Oh boy did I ever.

Falling is like, tripping with purpose. For a total of one point six seconds, I stopped all intake of any substance, and just fell. My wings caught the air, without any prompting from anyone or anywhere. My mind buzzed as I settled into a small circle for falling, almost politely.

The gliding was easy. My wings curled the air and arranged it to be almost submissive. No wind was there to offer me resistance, and I almost felt tempted to fly outside to feel it. Luke-warm breath funneled itself over my wings as I twirled in a circle, slowly parachuting to the ground like a little human soldier. Starscream was greatly amused and pleased, sending his approval through the bond. I was doing something right.

When I looked at the ground, I wasn't scared anymore. Only ten seconds in the air, and I was cured of any kind of height ailments. My wings would catch me. I had to believe in that, or I had nothing. I smiled as I touched the ground. My wings howled for the sky, and I looked morosely at Starscream

"The building. I want to go to the top." I practically demanded short of anything but breath, but Starscream understood. The sky was calling to me. It whisper what little secrets it could share with me, tempting me to find out on my own. I was hooked. Just another thing I was addicted to. "Then, can I try to fly? I… I don't think I can live without flying anymore."

"As it should be." The purr was there. "Yes. Let's go to the top, shall we?" He held out a hand and I hopped into it, climbing up to his shoulder to watch from his point of view as we took an elevator up. The elevator was in the very middle of the hanger, multipule bots could stand on it as it rose or fell. As we started rising to the top and I started to feel the wind, I almost tried to fly right there. The only thing keeping me down was the hard surface my bottom was planted on.

The wind was calling. How could I not answer? The keening. The pleasure. Wind was as much kin as Torn. Or Starscream. The wind was being sucked down into the hanger brutally, killing its wild spirit in favor of artificially trapping it. Bottled air. Ugh, awful. Unnatural. Then, we reached the top, and the elevator pressurized.

The first thing I noticed? The sky had not gotten any less beautiful than when I had left it. It was almost pristine, what with its fluffy white clouds and its blue background. The fingers of wind pulled at my body, leaving behind a print of wanton cold. Also surprisingly fiery, that touch. It left me wanting to be warmed and cooled. The beauty of the sky was forgotten as it's minon slowly sound to make me lose all control.

Goodness, the wind was beautiful; it even took precedence over the sky. Clouds obeyed the wind, not the sky. The sky was the wind's playground. Goodness, that meant it was my playground now. The toys at my disposal were endless. The world was my oyster, so to speak.

Starscream couldn't get me to the edge fast enough. When he did, he gave me strict instructions. He was going to fly down to the bottom, and I was going to glide to him. Simple… Not. He knew that pull of my systems, wanting to be everywhere the wind was going and more. If I could have been the wind then I would have been happy for eternity. But I wasn't. So I had to settle for being a part of the process.

Starscream's jet engines sprang to life, eating the wind and spitting it out angry and colorful. I watched in fascination as Starscream flew to the bottom and waited for me. With a smile, that I hope he could feel across the bond, I jumped. The height or distance didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. The jump didn't either.

What bothered me was for almost fifteen minutes I had only been thinking what I had started to dub, "transformer thoughts." I hadn't had a truly human moment for a while now. And as I leapt to the winds comforting embrace, I realized with these new wings were great responsibilities to my newest drug. Human thoughts had no place in this mind of mine. Human had place on ground, not air. It wasn't right. Unnatural. Humans changed. I wasn't. I was one thing or the other.

I was flying or I was grounded.

One of those options was now becoming totally unbearable.

Gliding to Starscream with my wings snapped taunt was easier than ever before. Even though I had only done it once… I was addicted. Hooked. Habituated. Was this how Heroin felt? The freedom. The passion. The love. The emptiness. The fullness. The completeness?

I landed in Starscreams arms, snuggling my cool frame into his warmer one. My tanks shivered in pleasure as my sensitive wings told me again and again. Just _one more time_. _One more time_, than today can be over. Just _one more time_ and I can die happy. I knew that wasn't the case though. I was going to die when I had to, not a moment earlier or a moment later. I almost knew, without the darkest shadow of a doubt, that I was going to keep flying until Starscream forcefully strapped me to the ground.

_One more time._

The punishment hadn't seemed like such a huge threat before, but now it was striking home.

Then again, Starscream would not have to do that if I was a good girl.

"You're a natural." Starscream breathed, fingers stroking my wing tips that were still ice cold. He laughed as he said to himself, "No surprise there."

_One more time. _

And after that-

_One more time._

"Hmmm, what a good girl." He purred in my mind, leaving behind traces of him being proud. Stamping my mind with the feeling of how I could make him proud. I can't even say I didn't like it. That's how my mind worked with him inside of it now. Chris was blocked for some reason, and I think it was all me who was doing it. Starscream was praising me for something as simple as being addicted to air. For using Air to live. Ha. He was not rejecting me. He would not reject me as long as I did good by him.

And if good by him was showing myself to never have restraint- then I would be the best good girl in the whole world.

This was the first time in a long time that I had felt this accepted. When I was with Chris, I felt it, but it was never this strong. I wasn't about to just let it slip through my fingers. Acceptance was another thing I loathed to release. It was all I wanted… Well, not really. I wanted a lot. I was a selfish creature made from a selfish creator, with a selfish kin, and a selfish soon-to-be commanding officer.

If I was going to Hell though, I was doing it right.

_One more time. _The shiver in my body heightened the need to run with the tendrils of air brushing over me.

"I want to fly." I pleaded with Starscream, feeling my internal heat returning to normal. It wasn't just to feel that adrenaline run over my sensors, this time it was for Starscream. Goodness. Acceptance. Making Starscream proud. I would fly until I dropped if that was all it took. Being true to my nature.

"You have the programming. You can land. Be my guest."

I thought he would say no, but when he gave me permission I literally leapt at the chance. Calculations ran through my head as I found the right way to do what had to be done. Me, little old me, who just barely passed math, was running calculations I had no business knowing about. Then it happened, as I was thinking to myself incredulously.

Those little burners I wasn't even aware of having were on. Turned on and emitting a lot of power. Though that power wasn't enough, because I wasn't moving. I could feel the lift, wanting to go that extra degree to get me into the air. Starscream briefly showed me the feeling of lifting. The tank dropping, the lightspark, and the freedom. The true freedom. The epitome of the word. The world at your fingertips, with only the knowledge you had to land sometime to keep you down.

I was flung into the sky faster than I thought possible.

Everything in my body was created for flights like this, but I could not do a lot until I looked like Starscream. Earth was not Cybertronian friendly. Gravity, clouds, and other unavoidable objects stopped me. Not until I had a true morph could I bend the air to my will like Starscream. That didn't deter me in the least. The engines attached to my wings let me fly in any direction, kind of like a helicopter. Even if I looked like some kind of flying gundam, it was the best feeling in the world.

I traveled almost a mile in a minute. The world opening its arms to greet me. The blue expansion of sky turned to black. Outer space was literally within reach. Nothing could bring me down. Nothing.

"Too high, Screech. Come down."

Except that.

Even then, my wings followed me as I obeyed, but I didn't feel trapped by it. Starscream was like me. He understood that I would have to fly again. Falling to the ground didn't make me any less Seeker Kin. Seeker. Huh. In FanFiction, I remember it was an elite group of fighters, or even just Kin. The word was starting to define me though. Kin.

I was back down to Starscream in three minutes, and I landed on his shoulder like a dove might. It was pretty for a two-hour old form. I sat with all the pressure of a dropped penny, and he looked at me before walking to the elevator, and going down. I almost loathed to go back down again.

Even though I was being caged again, it was enough to know I would be coming back to the light soon enough. As I watched the last little part of the sky creep past my line of sight I could only feel sorrow. Heavy, burdenful, sorrow. Starscream said nothing, but told me how proud he was of me.

Starscream being proud of me.

That was truly enough to keep me till the next time I was allowed to see the sky.

At least, I had to believe that.


End file.
